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I 




HISTORIC TABLET ON MOBILE CITY HALL 
Unveiled May 26th, 1911. 



/ 



BI-CENTENNIAL 

CELEBRATION 
MAY 26-28, 1911 

OF 

THE FOUNDING 
OF MOBILE 

By JEAN BAPTISTE DE BIENVILLE 



Mobile 

Commercial Printing Company 

1912 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

The plan of putting the account of the Mobile 
Bi-centennial proceedings in pamphlet form was 
adopted shortly after the celebration, but the as- 
sembling of the material, the speeches and photo- 
graphs, etc., has consumed much time. 

The work was carried out by a sub-committee 
of the Joint Committee, consisting of Messrs. Ham- 
ilton, Craighead, and Wilson. The narrative is 
based largely on the account given m the public 
prints. It Avould have been pleasant to tell more 
than is here told about the celebration, particularly 
the work of the sub-committees ; but selection would 
seem invidious, and to give every detail would in 
effect swell the pamphlet into a book. It is hoped 
til at enough has been told to present a general re- 
view of a very interesting event in the history of 
Bienville's city. 



WAY 19U 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Story of the Movement -5 

Official Recognition 10 

Programme 1^ 

Decorations 1*^ 

Mystic Parade 1'^ 

Marking the Limits of 1711 21 

Dedication of the Tablet 26 

Historical Addresses' ^ 37 

Banquet 44 

Medal and Souvenirs 55 

Historic Sites 56 

Conclusion 64 

Founding of Mobile (with separate index) 




• Zlnder 

(zrrencf) iToZ - iTn s 
(LyA^rrL&riccrrz i6iS, G on. f e c[ erode iS6i~5 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Page. 

Historic Tablet on City Hall Frontispiece. 

Under Five Flaars 4 

Maj'or Pat J. Lyons 6 

M. J. McDermott, Chairman Finance Committee 8 

Erwin Craighead, LL. D., Master of Ceremonies and 

Chairman Budget 10 

W. K. P. Wilson, General Secretary 12 

Mat Mahorner, Chairman Decorations and Lights 14 

H. T. Hartwell, Chairman Night Parade 16 

J. W. Whiting, Chairman Reception 18 

Thomas J. Yeend, Chairman Parade 20 

Miss Frances Hunter, sponsor for Great Britain 22 

Miss Mabel Moore, sponsor for Spain 22 

Miss Alice McDermott, sponsor for the United States.. 24 

Miss Willie Carrell, sponsor for the Confederacy 24 

Arch over Joachim at Monroe 26 

Peter J. Hamilton, LL. D., General Chairman 28 

City Hall during the Ceremonies 30 

Miss Anna Carlotta Hamilton, the Unveiler, sponsor 

for Old France 32 

Unveiling the Tablet 34 

Cary W. Butt, Chairman Stands and Barriers 36 

Hon. Francis J. Inge, President of City Council .'. 38 

Dr. Alcee Fortier, of Tulane University 42 

Murray Wheeler, Chairman Banquet 44 

M. Henri Francastel, representing the French Republic. 46 

Lord Eustace Percy, representing Great Britain 48 

J. A. Joullian, Chairman Transportation 50 

School Children waiting for the Procession 52 

Memorial Medal struck by the City of Mobile 54 

John F. Powers 5g 

N. B.— The booklet. The Founding of Mobile, has a 
separate paging. As a frontispiece to it will be found a 
portrait of Bienville, and at the end a map of Mobile in 
1<11, with the commemorative stones of 1911 indicated in 
black. 



I.— STORY OF THE MOVEMENT. 

The Bi-centennial Celebration of 1911 grew out 
of that of 1902. Mobile was founded by Bienville 
at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff in 1702 and removed 
to its permanent site in 1711, and so the two dates 
really make up parts of one event. At the Bi-Cen- 
tennial in 1902 a commemorative tablet was placed 
on the Court House at Mobile on May 22nd, with ap- 
propriate ceremonies, and a monument erected at 
Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff the next day with 
French and English addresses. Louis deV. Chau- 
dron (since deceased) wrote the tablet, which reads 
as follows : 

1902. 

To the glory of God 

and in honor of 

The illustrious brothers 

Le Moyne D Iberville 

and 

Le Moyne de Bienville 

who founded 

Mobile 

The first capital of Louisiana 

1702. 

A full account of the proceedings is found in 
the Alabama Historical Society Publications for 
1902, and a fine appreciation by Grace King is in the 
Outlook for Feb. 15, 1902. The earlier celebration, 
although smaller, was a fitting introduction to the 
later one of 1911. 

5 



The idea of celebrating the 200th anniversary 
of the City of Mobile was taken up as matter of 
discussion by the Iberville Historical Society in 
1907, at which time a committee on celebration was 
appointed, with Erwin Craighead as chairman, with 
instructions to try to interest Mobilians in the get- 
ting up of some ceremony to mark the date of the 
anniversary. The first step taken was to invite 
all organizations, including the city and county 
governments, to a conference on the subject and 
such conference was held February 7, 1909, in 
the Auditorium of the Battle House, Mr. Craighead 
presiding and outlining what would be needed to 
make a successful celebration. Represented in this 
meeting were the Iberville Historical Society, the 
city executive, the city council, the county Revenue 
Board, the Commercial Club, the Chamber of Com- 
merce, the Cotton Exchange, the School Board, the 
State Executive, the railroads, the hotels and the 
foreign consuls. A committee on ways and means, 
with Mr. Francis J. Inge as chairman, was appointed, 
after a considerable discussion of what would be 
j/roper to do. A resolution favorable to the holding 
of a celebration was adopted without objection. 

March 1, 1909, the committee reported to an- 
other meeting, held in the Auditorium, and a six- 
day programme submitted, which was adopted. The 
motion was made that the organization be incor- 
porated, the various organizations represented in the 
meeting to appoint representatives to serve on the 
several committees named in the report. 

Although thus ushered in by two well attended 
meetings there did not develope that interest in 

6 




MAYOR PAT J. LYONS 



the movement that gave promise of success ; and the 
projectors had finally to recognize that if anything 
were to be accomplished it would have to be upon 
a much more modest scale than was first proposed; 
and that the Iberville Historical Society would have 
to do it, getting what aid it could from other sources 
as the work proceeded. 

Not until the fall of 1910, however, was the 
actual work brought forward, ]\Ir. Peter Joseph 
Hamilton making the first call, which was attended 
by four other faithful Ibervillians, Messrs. Gary W. 
Butt, W. K. P. Wilson, A. G. Moses and Er- 
win Craighead. These, with F. G. Bromberg, became 
the Iberville committee having the matter in charge. 

The question of finance is always an important 
one and the Iberville Historical Society met it by 
inducing the city authorities to make the occasion a 
municipal celebration. The memorial to Maj^or 
P. J. Lyons dated January 12, 1911, was cor- 
dially received and was brought to the attention 
of the City Council in a special message. The 
council appointed a committee of Mayor Lyons, 
G. J. Flournoy, F. J. Inge, F. K. Hale, 
John Craft and W. C. Carrell to arrange de- 
tails with the Iberville Committee and shortly after 
made an appropriation of $500 for expenses. This 
was ultimately increased to $1,000 and assured the 
success of the celebration. The joint committee 
from society and city organized in April by electing 
P. J. Hamilton general chairman, and W. K. P. Wil- 
son secretary. The joint committee adopted the 
plan of Mr. Hamilton calling for invitation of dis- 
tinguished men, striking a medal, erection of an ap- 



propriate bronze tablet on the City Hall, a parade 
about the original French limits, and marking dif- 
ferent points of historical interest in the city. 

The celebration was soon blocked out and the 
creation of sub-committees having charge of the 
various details provided for. Decidedly the most im- 
portant of these was the selection of Michael J. 
McDermott and his finance committee. Mr. Mc- 
Dermott and his associates were indefatigable, 
spending day after day in raising subscriptions, and 
meeting as a rule with a cordial reception. The 
newspapers greatly aided the canvass by keeping the 
matter before the public in almost daily stirring ap- 
peals. Two great steps towards raising the necessary 
funds were taken Avhen the joint committee called 
upon the County Commissioners and secured an ap- 
propriation of $500 and later secured an appropria- 
tion from the School Board of $300. The public and 
private subscriptions ultimately exceeded the sum of 
$7,000, which proved adequate for the celebration 
which followed. 

The chairman of the sub-committees as appoint- 
ed were made members of the general committee and 
worked with zeal and enthusiasm. At the weekly 
meeting of the General Committee, held at the City 
Hall, their reports were always encouraging. 

Hon. F. J. Inge of the City Council proposed 
that fleets of the nations which had controlled Mo- 
bile be represented and the matter was taken up 
with the State Department by the Alabama delega- 
tion in Congress. The time was too short to arrange 
this satisfactorily, but the presence of the American 
squadron in the Gulf made possible a representation 

•8 




M. J. McDERMOTT 



of American sailors. A temporary hitch occurred 
in connection with the assignment to Mobile of three 
war vessels which the admiral did not think it wise 
to bring across the bar. Interviews followed, which 
resulted in sending a strong detachment of officers 
and men by rail. The revenue cutter Winona was 
in port and participated. 

The idea of having the president of the United 
States press a button to open the ceremonies was 
suggested by T. C. DeLeon in the public prints and 
adopted by the committee. The AA^estern Union Tele- 
graph Co. made all arrangements free of charge. 

One of the chief elements of success of the cele- 
bration was the work of the Budget Committee, of 
which Mr. Erwin Craighead was originator and 
chairman. By holding a firm hand on the appro- 
priations for all committees, everything was kept in 
harmony and within the limits of the money in the 
treasury. Every committee, however, had its full 
share of work and the different chairmen should be 
held in lasting remembrance. They were as fol- 
lows : 

Budget, Erwin Craighead; Reception, J. W. 
Whiting ; Parade, Thomas J. Yeend ; Decoration and 
Lights, Mat ]Mahorner; Orations at the Theatre, 
Francis J. Inge ; Night Parade, Harry T. Hartwell ; 
Stands and Barriers, Cary W. Butt ; Carriages, W. C. 
Carrell ; Banquet, Murray Wheeler ; Sailors and Sol- 
diers, John F. Powers; Transportation, J. A. Joul- 
lian; Music, J. L. Taylor, and Grand Marshal, John 
D. Hagan. 

]\Ir. Wright Smith, the city engineer, and his as- 
sistant, John R. Peavey, determined the old city 



limits by surveys which were embodied in a map of 
Mobile in 1711. The lines to the south of Fort Louis 
had previously been somewhat uncertain. This map 
wa^ exhibited in Zadek's window and attracted much 
attention. A copy is found at the end of this 
volume. 

A tentative programme was arranged at an early 
date, but some features were taken out and others 
added from time to time, until the definite arrange- 
ments were finally made. 

II.— OFFICIAL RECOGNITION. 

The importance of the celebration was first 
recognized by the Legivslature of Alabama in a joint 
resolution which was approved April 6th, 1911, as 
follows : 

No. 241. JOINT RESOLUTION. S. J. R. 52 

Whereas this year, 1911, is the two hundredth 
anniversary of the foundation and settlement of the 
City of Mobile, first capital of La Province de la 
Louisiane in 1711 j and, 

Whereas the City of Mobile and her people are 
making preparations for celebrating the event : 

Therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate of Ala- 
bama, the House of Representatives concurring, That 
the Legislature of Alabama does hereby request the 
senators and representatives in Congress from the 
State of Alabama to bring the said anniversary cele- 
bration to the attention of Congress and the several 
departments of the United States Government and 
the representatives at Washington of foreign 
powers. 

10 




ERWIN CRAIGHEAD, LL.D. 



Acting on this request a joint resolution was in- 
troduced by Congressman Geo. W. Taylor and passed 
the House of Representatives. It then passed the 
Senate at the instance of Senator Johnston, in both 
casas with flattering addresses. This resolution was 
as follows : 

Resolved, That the Congress of the United 
States acknowledges with pleasure the receipt of said 
resolution (of the Legislature of Alabama), and ap- 
preciates the courtesy of the notice extended of that 
important event in the Nation's history. 

Resolved, further, That we commend the action 
of the city of Mobile in making preparations for this 
celebration. We regard that territory as one of the 
most valuable acquisitions of the Government, and 
congratulate Alabama and the people of Mobile upon 
her growth as a city and extend our best wishes for 
a successful celebration and a large attendance of 
patriotic American citizens. 

Resolved, further. That a copy of these resolu- 
tions be forwarded to the mayor of the city of Mo- 
bile in evidence of our appreciation of the work that 
will be done on May twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred 
and eleven, in commemoration of the founding and 
settlement of our beautiful and progressive city on 
the Gulf. 

In keeping with the French nature of the cele- 
bration Mayor P. J. Lyons issued a proclamation, 
following the style of those of Louis XIV, 
which was scattered broadcast and generally ob- 
served. It was as follows : 



11 



MAYOR'S PROCLAMATION. 

State of Alabama, 
City of Mobile. 

•Pat J. Lyons, Mayor of Mobile, to whom these 
presents shall come, greeting : 

Our good City of Mobile having attained the age 
of two hundred years, it has appeared proper to our 
Honorable City Council to celebrate this event on 
May 26, 1911, and we do hereby issue this proclama- 
tion and call upon our good citizens' to observe said 
day as a holiday and time of rejoicing, decorate 
their houses by day and illuminate them by night 
and welcome and entertain the visitors and strang- 
ers within our gates. 

For the better observance of said celebration we 
hereby direct that the offices in the City Hall be 
closed and request that all citizens close their places 
of business on said day and join in the exercises as 
follows : 

At 9 a. m. they will repair to Duncan Place, take 
their places in their several societies, guilds and or- 
ganizations and at 10 o'clock Oa* a signal given by 
Hon. William H. Taft president of the United States, 
proceed in a parade of all civic, political, military, 
ecclesiastical, social, business, educational and other 
organizations', mark the limits of Mobile as they were 
in 1711, and finally assemble on Royal street to par- 
ticipate in the unveiling of a tablet on the City Hall 
as a lasting memorial of the Bi-centenary of Mobile. 

On the evening of the same day our good citi- 
zens will assemble in the Mobile Theatre to hear 
orations by Hon. Emmet O'Neal, governor of Ala- 
bama, and Dr. Alcee Fortier, representing the gov- 
ernor of Louisiana, in commemoration of said event. 
For such is our pleasure. 

12 




W. K. P. WILSON 



In witness whereof we have hereto set our hand 
and caused the great seal of the City of Mobile to be 
affixed all this 12th day of May, the year of grace, 
One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eleven, and of the 
Independence of the United States the one hundred 
and thirty-fifth. 

(Seal) Pat J. Lyons, Mayor. 

De par le Mayor. 

Attest : 

R. H. Inge. City Clerk. 

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT. 

Upon the first day of the celebration, May 26, 
immediately after giving the signal which opened the 
ceremonies. President Taft sent a message, which 
was read by Mr. Craighead from the platform as part 
of the exercises'. 
Bi-Centennial Celebration, Mobile, Ala.: 

Having survived the failure of four flags, may 
Mobile continue to prosper and grow more beauti- 
ful under the present one. 

William H. Taft. 

The Alabama delegation at Washington, par- 
ticularly Representatives Taylor and Hobson and 
Senator Johnston, took great interest m the celebra- 
tion and were active in securing official action there 
and as to representation of foreign nations at Mo- 
bile. 

III.— PROGRAMME. 

1711_M0BILE BI-CENTENNIAL— 1911 

May 25, 26 and 27. 

PROGRAI\IME. 

Thursday, May 25th, 1911. 

13 



AFTERNOON— Reception of Governors and Of- 
ficers by the Reception Committee. 

8 :00 P. M.— Parade of Red Men, and Mystic 
Parade representing foundation of Mobile. 

9:00 P. M.— Reception at Athelstan and Ma- 
nassas Clnbs to City's invited guests. 

9 :30 P. M. — Bi-centennial MaskervS, Temperance 
Hall. 

Night — Illuminations. 

Friday, May 26th. 

10 :00 A. M.— Signal by Pres. Taft for organiza- 
tions, soldiers, seamen, etc., to assemble at Duncan 
Place. 

10:30 A. M. — Organization of Parade. 

11 :00 A. M. to 12 M.— Movement of procession 
around old French limits, the mayor and schools 
dedicating corner stones'. 

12 :00 M.— Presentation by P. J. Hamilton, A.M., 
IjL.D., and unveiling by school girls of Tablet on the 
City Hall, in Place Royale. Response by Mayor Pat 
J. Lyons and congratulations by Governors of Ala- 
bama, Mississippi and Louisiana, etc. 

Afternoon — Indian Encampment in Bienville 
Square^ Concert, etc. 

Ni ght — Illuminations . 
7:30 P. M.— Addresses at the Mobile Theatre by 
Gov. Emmet O'Neal of Alabama and Dr. Alcee For- 
tier of Tnlane University. 

9 :30 P. M. — Banquet to Governors and other 
invited guests of the City. 

Saturday, May 27th. 
10 :00 A. M. — Automobile rides. 

Morning — Concert. 

14 




MAT MAHORNER 



Afternoon — Visiting Cutters and shipping. 
8:00 P. M.— Reception at the Yacht Club to 
City's invited guests. 

Sunday, May 28th. 
11 :00 A. M. — Special services in all the churches. 

IV.— DECORATIONS. 

The official decorations were confined to the 
old French limits and were especially effective on 
Royal, Government and Dauphin streets, and about 
Bienville Square and the Place Royale. This place 
was Royal street between Grovernment and Church 
streets, being so named and set apart by columns for 
the occasion. A five flag trophy, designed by Mr. 
Charles Hess, was generally used, and with fine ef- 
fect, while at night the illuminations carried out by 
Capt. John Mahon evoked great admiration. 

Of the private decorations the Register of the 
day said:— "Among the most artistically and elab- 
orately decorated and brilliantly illuminated build- 
ings' are the Battle House, the Bank of Mobile build- 
ing, the building of the Mobile Electric Company, 
the old Odd Fellows' building, now occupied by the 
Loyal Order of Moose, Knights of Pythias Castle 
Hall and others on Dauphin and Royal streets. 

Battle House. 

"From the center window of the roof garden 
to the north and south ends of the Royal street side 
of the Battle House is a festoon of electric lights 
in the shape of an inverted V. From the apex of 
the inverted letter the tricolor of the Bi-Centennial, 
red, white and blue, are draped in graceful folds, 

15 



while arches of this cloth hang gracefully over the 
entrance to the gallery on the second floor of the 
building. In full view, with the Stars and Stripes 
most prominent, the shield of the United States, 
partly concealed by the silken folds of an American 
flag, is in the center of the gallery with the flags 
of France, Spain, Great Britain and the Confed- 
eracy artistically intertwined and draped around. 

K. of P. Castle Hall. 

' ' The gallery of Castle Hall, Knights of Pythias, 
is probably the most elaborately decorated and bril- 
liantly illuminated of any building facing on Bien- 
ville Square. The flags of the five nations which 
have ruled Mobile and the colors of the Bi-Centen- 
nial are hung to the rail around the edge of the 
gallery, and hundreds of twinkling red, white and 
blue electric lights carry out the color scheme of 
Mobile's celebration. 

''The flags of the United States and the Con- 
federacy and the tri-color are most in evidence in 
the decoration of the hall of the Loyal Order of 
Moose, northwest corner of St. Michael and Royal 
streets. One American flag, with a flag of either 
France, Spain, Great Britain or the Confederacy, is 
crossed over every window on the second floor, 
while around the edge of the gallery the flags of all 
five nations are unfurled to the breeze. Over the en- 
trance to the gallery are draped 'Old Glory' and the 
tricolor. 

Bank of Mobile. 

"The Bank of Mobile building, northeast cor- 
ner of St. Michael and Royal streets, is another of 

16 



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H. T. HARTWELL 



'the many effectively decorated buildings. Over the 
space between the windows on the outer walls of the 
building are draped the five flags which have float- 
ed over Mobile. 

"Last evening Bienville Square was the center 
of activity, the effectiveness of the illuminations 
and the gorgeousness of the decorations luring vis- 
itors and townspeople alike. Spanning all entrances 
to Bienville Square are arches brilliantly illuminated 
draped with the flags of the five nations and the 
tri-color of the Bi-Centennial. The band stand, with 
its gorgeous decorations and illumination, slightly 
mellowed by the soft drapery^ was filled with chil- 
dren. Extending -over the center of the walks are 
long strings of lights, which form into a spider web 
of brilliancy, vsuspended over the fountain in the 
center of the square." 

v.— MYSTIC PARADE. 

Mobile's Bi-centennial Celebration of the plant- 
ing of the banner of France on the shores of the 
Gulf began May 25 at 8 o'clock p. m. with a historical 
parade, preceded by the Red Men, who turned out 
over one hundred strong. The Red IMen had an en- 
campment in Bienville Square, and during the whole 
Bi-centennial kept open tent there and added much 
to the interest of the celebration. 

The night parade formed at the corner of 

Beauregard and St. Joseph streets' and moved 

south on St. Joseph to Dauphin, thence west 

to Conception, north to St. Francis, east on St. Fran- 

.cis to Royal, south on Royal to Government, west 

;i7 



to Broad, countermarched east on Government to 
Cedar, thence north on Cedar to Dauphin, east to 
St. Joseph and thence to the Knights of Columbus 
Hall, where a masquerade ball added to the en- 
joyment of the occasion. 

Crowds Along Line. 

Crowds began to form along the line of march 
ful^y an hour before the procession started from the 
point of formation, and by 8 o'clock both sides of 
the streets included in the route of the procession 
were packed and jammed with a congested mass of 
restless humanity, the largest gathering being at 
Bienville Sc^uare. 

Leading the procession were dusky Indian 
scouts, the inevitable vanguard of an Indian caval- 
cade. Following the scouts came two braves car- 
rying the totem pole of the tribe ; then a long strag- 
gling line of braves afoot, with bows and arrows 
and torches, which lighted the way. They were fol- 
lovred by other braves on Indian ponies. Roman 
candles, sending crimson balls of fire into the starry 
night, in the hands of the Red Men were a feature 
of the parade. 

Foundinff of Mobile. 

The Red Men were following by Dragons Band, 
which headed the Historical Parade. First came the 
title float, ''The Founding of Mobile," then in reg- 
ular order, ''Bienville Leaving Quebec," "The Court 
of Louis XIV," "The Hall of Sciences," "Iberville 
Landing at Massacre Island," "Fame Crownmg 
Bienville," "Fort Louis De La Mobile," and lastly, 
"Historical Mobile and Its Five Flags." 

The floats were those used by the Infant Mys- 

18 




GEN. J. W. WHITING 



tics in their well remembered parade on Mardi Gras, 
1911. 

Iberville Leaving Quebec. 

Clothed in velvet and satin and wearing the hat 
of the cavalier with its flowing plume, Iberville stood 
by the mast of the frail little vessel that was to car- 
ry him down the St. Lawrence river and across the 
Atlantic to the court of Louis XIV. Lapping at the 
bowsprit of the little vessel, the waves of the St. 
Lawrence appeared to break, and fresh ones take 
their place. The reflected light from the torches cast 
their weird light over the float and gave it the ap- 
pearance of sunset. Standing on the steep cliffs' of 
the heights of Abraham was the commander of the 
garrison in knightly attire bidding the vessel fare- 
well and Godspeed. On the cliffs were the native 
fir trees which added to the general scheme of green 
and red. 

Court of Loui.<3 XIV. 

In his costly court at Versailles, which called for 
the expenditure of a vast amount of money, Louis 
XIV, the most extravagant monarch of any age, 
viewed his loyal courtiers and ladies promenading in 
the gardens. His throne was on a solid marble base 
and was decorated with the most precious gems, 
scintillating points of radiance. Gold leaf skillfully 
applied to the throne gave it the appearance of be- 
ing of solid gold. Louis' court was a brilliant crea- 
tion of color and light. The costly costumes of the 
courtiers and ladies recalled the extravagance of the 
period. 

At Massacre Island. 

Standing in the bow of the frigate Badine was 

19 



Iberville, who had been sent from the court of Louis 
to explore the New World. Through the bulwarks 
the muzzles of cannon protruded and from the stern 
of the vessel hung the red battle lantern. Stamped 
on the faces of the explorers standing near him was 
the expression of determination and purpose and at 
the same time that of joy at reaching an apparently 
fertile shore. Upon landing on the island the ex- 
plorers found the beach strewn with human bones, 
bleached and dried in the sun. Here they erected a 
block house and planted the banner of France. 

Port Louis de la Mobile. 

Realistic in its portrayal of the forts in the new 
world of that period, and showing the first coloniza- 
tion of Mobile, ''Fort Louis de la Mobile" was loudly 
cheered. Putting off from the shore was an Indian 
paddling a canoe. Leaning on his carbine, was one 
of the garrison standing guard at the gate. Through 
the walls of the log fort could be seen the muzzle 
of a cannon. 

Hall of Science. 

Revolving on its axis, the earth was being viewed 
by four scientists, who though laughed at in that 
period, and scorned by many, steadily attained pres- 
tige and respect. Standing on a platform at the top 
of the sphere was the symbol of science, showing the 
victory of science over the world. Profusely deco- 
rated with silver and gold leaf and many splotches 
of gorgeous color, the ''Hall of Science" was a mas- 
terpiece. The flickering lights from the torches lent 
aid to the general color scheme and effect. 
Fame Crowning Bienville. 

Bienville, after enduring many hardships and 

20 




T. A. YEEND 



keeping the colony together, was crowned by Fame. 
He occupied a throne in the center of the float and 
Fame, standing above, weighed out his portion of 
her wares. 

Mobile Under Five Flags. 
Five miniature capitols, representing five flags 
which have been waved over Mobile, draped with the 
flags and colors of the different nations, were oc- 
cupied by characters dressed in the style of each 
period. Columbia, dressed in the flowing draperies 
of red, white and blue, occupied the center of the 
float with the characters of the other countries on 
her right and left. Kinging cheers greeted ''His- 
torical Mobile," over which the spectators were more 
enthusiastic than any other float. 

VI.— MARKING THE CITY LIMITS OF 1711. 

On May 26, 1911, at 10 o'clock a. m., the formal 
ceremonies were inaugurated upon a signal from 
Washington, where the President of the United 
States touched a key which rang the gong in every 
fire house in the City of Mobile, released the horses, 
which jumped into position, and a few seconds 
later the department was ready for its part in the 
grand celebration. Two minutes afterwards the tel- 
gram of congratulations from President Taft was 
received. Marshal John D. Hagan placed the organ- 
izations in five divisions as they arrived, and at 11 
a. m. the parade was ready. 

Procession. 
The procession w^as over ten blocks in length. 
Leading was a squad of mounted officers, foUoAved 

21 



by Drago 's Band and a platoon of police on foot un- 
der command of Sergeant Farmer. Behind the po- 
lice were twenty-four open carriages, the first occu- 
pied by Mayor Lyons, Chairman Peter J. Hamilton, 
Hon. E. C. McMahon of Montreal, Canada, and 
Mr. Andre Lafargue, representing His Honor, Mayor 
Martin Behrman of New Orleans, and the 
others by Rear Admirals Aaron Ward and Lucien 
Young and staffs of officers, city and county 
officials, representatives and invited guests of 
the city, amongst whom was Emile S. Ecuyer, pres- 
ent on behalf of five French societies of New Or- 
leans. Three companies of blue jackets, led by 
a magnificent band of over sixty pieces, followed 
the carriages. These men from the battleships Min- 
nesota., Mississippi and Vermont presented a spec- 
tacle worthy of the uniform they wore and which 
stirred patriotism and enthusiasm to the highest. 
Then came the jackies from the revenue cutter 
Winona. 

The detachment from the fleet was followed by 
three companies of the First Regiment, Alabama Na- 
tional Guard, commanded by Captain Grove. The 
militiamen were enthusiasticaUy received and made 
a fine appearance. 

Sponsors of the Nations, 

The entire student body of Spring Hill College, 
led by the Spring Hill Military Band, brought up the 
rear of the martial array and they in turn were fol- 
low^ed b}^ cavaliers in full court dress, escorting the 
sponsor. Miss Carlotta Hamilton. Miss Hamilton 
was prettily and daintily clad in white, with white 
sto<ikings and shoes and white satin ribbon in her 

22 




MISS FRANCES HUNTER 




MISS MABEL MOORE 



hair. Her dress was bespangled with the golden 
fleur de lis. She represented old France. 

Miss Mabel Moore, clad in costume of yellow, 
with black trimmings, black slippers and hose, rep- 
resented the regime of Spain and was escorted by 
several Spanish courtiers. 

Following the representation of the regime of 
Spain was Miss Frances Hunter, a very pretty blonde 
of the true Saxon type, with wavy flaxen hair, au- 
burn tinged. Miss Hunter was dressed in white with 
a red shirt, the St. Andrew's Cross draped over the 
left shoulder and under the right arm. 

Miss Willie Carmelia Carrell represented the 
Confederacy. Her chair was profusely decorated 
with the Confederate colors and she was escorted by 
grizzled veterans of the Civil War. Miss Carrell's 
chair was carried between single files of the veterans 
who followed a tattered battle flag. 

The United States was represented by Miss Alice 
L. McDermott, who was dressed in a waist and skirt 
of red, white and blue, with stars set in a background 
of blue. Draped over her head and shoulders were 
the colors of the Union. 

These five maidens were carried in Sedan chairs 
beautifully draped and divided the immense proces- 
sion into five parts, containing organizations con- 
nected with the French, British, Spanish, American 
or Confederate period. Each division was preceded 
by the flag of its period and carried appropriate 
badges and colors. 

Corners of Old City. 
At the first commemorative stone, corner of Royal 
and St. IMichael streets, the children of the Clark and 



Oakdale schools, dressed in full Indian costume, rep- 
resented the Indian era before 1540. Here Mayor 
Lyons dedicated the stone in the name of Mobile. 

Proceeding north on Royal to St. Louis, the 
procession turned west to a stone between St. Louis 
and St. Michael streets on Conception street. Here 
ceremonies commemorating DeSoto's march across 
Alabama were conducted and this stone dedicated to 
history in the presence of the girls of the parochial 
schools. 

The procession then moved south to the corner 
of Conception and Government streets, where the 
landing of the French under Bienville in 1711 was 
celebrated. This corner was held by the girls of the 
Knox and Baker schools. 

The next marking stone was dedicated at the 
corner of Government and Joachim streets, the ex- 
ercises, in the presence of the Yerby school, celebrat- 
ing the ceding of Louisiana to the British in 1763. 

At Monroe and Joachim streets the capture of 
Mobile in 1813 under claim of the Louisiana Purchase 
])y the United States was celebrated by children of 
the E. L. Russell and E. L. Marechal schools. There 
over Joachim street was erected an imposing arch 
with a platform at the top. The platform and the 
arch were decorated with the Stars and Stripes 
and the tricolor of the Bi-centennial. Mounted on 
the steps were forty-eight pupils, while on the plat- 
form were Leo Williams, representing Uncle Sam, 
and Miss Lula Norville, as Columbia. As the proces- 
sion hove in sight, the national anthems' of the United 
States, ''Star Spangled Banner," and ''My Country, 
'Tis of Thee," were sung. Descending from the 

24 




MISS ALICE McDERMOTT 




MISS WILLIE CARRELL 



platform, Miss Norville placed a beautiful wreath of 
rcises and other flowers over the marking stone, and 
delivered an appropriate address. 

The historic feature celebrated at the next mark- 
ing stone, corner of Monroe and Conception streets, 
was the rule of the Confederacy. Chronologically this 
should have been the second Spanish corner, but the 
Spaniards exchanged with the Confederates so as to 
save the old veterans the longer march back to the 
reviewing stand at the City Hall. The girls here 
were from the High school and Raphael Semmes 
school. 

At Canal and Conception the second Spanish 
period of 1780 to 1813 was commemorated by school 
children from the Leinkauf school, while at Royal 
and Canal the boys of the parochial schools cele- 
brated the reunion of the States. 

At each of the eight corners the children were 
clad in costume or colors of the respective countries 
and welcomed the parade with the appropriate na- 
tional air and the waving of flags. The singing was 
the fruit of excellent training by Mrs. Maude Tru. 
wit. Each marking stone was covered with the ap- 
propriate flag and this was removed by Mayor 
Lyons as he pronounced the words, "In the name of 
the people of Mobile, I dedicate this tablet to his- 
tory." The ceremony was simple but impressive and 
the bright faces and costumes of the eager children 
made up a scene not to be forgotten. 

With tens of thousands banked on either side of 
the streets along the line of march, standing in car- 
riages, on wagons, in automobiles, crowding gal- 
leries and balconies to capacity, standing room was 

25 



at a premium and those behincf, in their eagerness 
to view the spectacular military feature, pushed the 
people in front out into the streets, to be forced 
back again by mounted officers and policemen sta- 
tioned at regular intervals along the route of the 
procession. Stirred by the strains of martial music 
and the clear, thrilling notes of the bugle, audible 
ripples of admiration passed through the assembled 
throngs, followed by cheers and enthusiastic and 
patriotic applause, as the Boys in Blue marched 
by in perfect alignment, or the Veterans in Gray 
passed with bent forms but bright, alert eyes. 

When all eight cornerstones had been dedicated 
the procession turned north on Royal street and pro- 
ceeded to the City Hall. 

VII.— DEDICATION OF THE TABLET ON THE 

CITY HALL. 

The procession had s'iarted at 11 o'clock and 
it was about 1 o'clock when the officials and invited 
guests ascended the reviewing stand erected in the 
Place Royale in front of the City Hall. From there 
they reviewed the procession as it passed and formed 
for the presentation exercises. 

At one end of this stand or rostrum there had 
been placed upon the wall of the City- Hall a com- 
memorative tablet, at first covered with flags, and 
about this centered the chief ceremonies of the day. 
The stand was covered by a canopy and elaborately 
decorated with flags of the five nations which had 
once possessed Mobile. Occupied by distinguished 
visitors, it presented an inspiring sight to the thou- 

26 



sands of onlookers crowding the street in front and 
the windows and balustrades of the county building 
opposite. 

When all of the seats on the platform had been' 
filled, Dr. Craighead, master of ceremonies, arose, 
and calling the gathering to order, read the telegram 
from President Taft congratulating Mobile upon the 
celebration of the Bi-centennial. The exercises 
were opened with the invocation by Right Rev. 
Bishop Edward P. Allen of the diocese of Mobile, 
after which General Chairman Hamilton delivered 
the address of presentation to the city. 

PRESENTATION BY PETER J. HAMILTON. 

Mr. Mayor, Honored Visitors, and Fellow Mobilians : 
We have come back from our pilgrimage around 
the French boundaries of Mobile and have piously 
dedicated to history stones marking each of the eight 
corners of. the old town. It only remains on the spot 
when Mobile was founded to dedicate a tablet to 
the memory of our founder. Were Bienville here 
this warm May day he would spend the time in ac- 
tive work, but now that Providence has accomplished 
his mission it is fitting for us to stop our usual oc- 
cupations and for a day recall what he accomplished. 
Two hundred years ago all here was forest and 
the riverside covered also with undergrowth; but 
men were here and it was the scene of animation 
quite different from the present. Down on the river 
bank, at our Water street, Chateaugue, the sailor 
brother of Bienville, was superintending the break- 
ing up of cedar rafts, Apalache Indians were bring- 
ing the logs up to where we stand, and Bienville 

27 



with a few French soldiers was having these shar- 
pened and placed in the ground to make a palisade 
fort. On this high ground other Indians were clear- 
i]ig away the forest, and French soldiers were going 
hither and thither on errands for the commandant. 
A few heads of families were, under the direction 
«)f Engineer Paillou, seeking the location of the lots 
which had been assigned them. With them were 
some children, one of whom was Francois Le Camp, 
— the first Creole or native born child of the colony. 
For Bienville, unlike so many other pioneers, was 
not building a fortification for protection against 
the Indians, but with the Indians was building less 
a fort than a city. The boundaries of the palisade 
extended from a little to the west of our Royal street 
to a little to the east of Water street, as now marked 
by marble fleurs de lis, and north and south they 
ran from Theatre to the north of Church street. 

We have every reason to suppose that the 
esplanade reserved about the fort was called P^ace 
Royale, as we have named it for today, and that our 
Royal street was named from it. To the north were 
laid out six blocks, extending two blocks deep from 
the river, except at one point where it was deeper, 
and south of the fort were also two tiers of six 
blocks each. 

But what did this mean — ti. ^' -^ of a 

French city, without a wall, on the banks of ..^ - t- 
ican river? It meant several things. For one it 
was the removal of an old established settlement 
I'rom a p^ace subject to overflow down to a place 
which was free from all such danger. And yet it 
was done in time of distress, when the home country 

2S 




PiTER J. HAjiILTON, LL.D. 



^ 



could furnish little and the inhabitants suffered from 
want of all kinds. Even the port of Dauphine Island 
had just been sacked by the hated British. 

It meant also that while Louis XIV, the great- 
est king of modern times, was hemmed in by British 
armies on the east and by the British fleet on the 
west and could do little for the colony, he had a 
colonial organizer of the first rank in Jean Baptiste 
Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. The energy, which, 
in Champlain had founded a Canadian city, in La 
Salle had explored thousands of miles of the Missis- 
sippi Basin, had in Bienville become a great colon- 
izing force. The conditions of the new world had 
made of the old Norman blood a new world force. 

It meant that French colonization had abandon- 
ed attempts in South America and on the Florida 
coast, had even branched away from the frozen 
North, and that, as she had her Marseilles on the 
Mediterranean, France was building another port 
upon the Mediterranean of the New Wor^d. And 
it was more than a mere port. It was the point of 
French influence among the four greatest Indian 
tribes of America, — Choctaw^s, Chickasaws, Musco- 
gees and Cherokees, — an influence which was to 
make the southern half of what is now the United 
States the French province of Louisiana, correspond- 
ing to Canada in the north. 

It meant still more. The omnivorous Briton 
had appropriated the coast line of the Atlantic 
Ocean from Florida up to Canada and was extend- 
ing his power up the Atlantic rivers. The time was 
not yet, but soon to come, foreseen by the French 
Iberville rather than by the English themselves, 

29 



when they would seek the more fertile lands of the 
Mississippi Basin. The port on the Gulf of Mexico 
was to be supplemented by interior forts throughout 
that basin up to the Great Lakes and make of Cana- 
da and Louisiana a vaster New France which should 
build until it could crush the English colonies and 
drive them back into the ocean whence they came. 

No less than this was the meaning of the meet- 
ing of Frenchmen and Indians, of women and chil- 
dren, upon this site two hundred years ago. To his- 
tory it means all this, and to us of Mobile it means 
even more, for then and there was built our own 
mother city, the home that we love so well. 

This celebration is unlike those in the Atlantic 
States where men gather to glorify their ow^n an- 
cestors. There is a personal tie that adds zest to 
such celebrations. Here there is no such interest. 
Probably not more of us than can be counted on one 
hand trace their descent back to the French of 1711. 
Almost all of us are of British extraction, and noth- 
ing would have delighted Bienville more than to 
know that our ancestors were driven out of America. 

So that this celebration is more than personal ; 
it marks a patriotivsm broader than is usual. It is 
the tribute of enemies to a great man, the homage 
cf Americans to one of the makers of America, to 
one who foresaw the greatness of the South West 
and planted here a city which was for the Mississippi 
Valley and Gulf Coast what Jamestown was for the 
Atlantic. Providence has developed history in a dif- 
ferent way from Bienville's plan, but he was an in- 
strument of Providence in founding civilization 
here, as we who have entered into the Frenchman's 



rest are instruments to perpetuate it. 1711 and 1911 
are far apart, but the period between is continuous 
and the future is but its further continuanee. A 
hundred years hence men and women will stand 
here again and add their tribute to the man who 
founded Mobile and to those who have been 
worthy to rank as his successors. Possibly none of 
us will be remembered then, but let us so do our 
part as citizens that Mobile and America will reach 
a higher rank and nobler usefulness even though we 
individually be forgotten. All we can ask — and it is 
enough — is that we may do work good enough to 
outlast ourselves. 

Mr. Mayor, the central fact of this celebration 
is the placing on the walls of the City Hall a tablet 
commemorating the foundation of Mobile. As in 
geology, we go down stratum by stratum to reach 
bed rock, so here we remove the flags — or shall T 
say veils — that cover up our history. First these 
girls will take off our own American Flag and show 
the Confederate banner. Below that is another 
American emblem, and next we find the Spanish flag 
Avth all its proud associations. Take that away and 
then comes in view the Union Jack of Great Britain, 
the mother of so many of us. Below this we come 
to the Fleur de Lis of the country which under that 
emblem as under the later Tricolor has been the 
leader of modern civilization, — France, La Belle 
France. And beneath all is the TABLET in honor of 
Bienville, our founder. 

To me as president of the historical society 
named for his brother Iberville has fallen the honor 
of presenting it. There it is, protected by Mobile's 

31 



five flags. Some of us have seen this tablet cast 
here in Mobile and erected by Mobilians. Into the 
crucible were cast metals and coins of the countries 
which have ruled here, and most of all there went 
in thoughts of honor to Bienville, of love for the 
Mobile of to-day, and prayers for the Mobile of to- 
morrow. It will be unveiled by Mobile school girls, 
and I deliver it to you and your successors, to be 
preserved forever as a memorial of this Bicentenary. 
THE TABLET. 
After a prayer of dedication by Rev. D. A» 
Planck of the Central Presbyterian Church, the 
tablet was unveiled in a unique manner. Miss Car- 
lotta Hamilton, representing Old Prance, removed in 
front of the tablet the five successive flags, as if 
she were removing the five successive historical 
strata mentioned in her father's address. She hand- 
ed to each of the other four maidens' the flag repre- 
senting the corresponding country, until she took 
off last of all a white banner with golden fleurs de 
lis. 

This act revealed the tablet, whose wording is 
by Erwin Craighead, and reads as follows: 
The City His Monument. 

To 

Jean Baptiste Le Moyne 

Sieur de Bienville 

1680—1768 

Who on this spot began building 

Fort Louis de la Mobile, 

The First Capital 

of the 

Province of Louisiana., 

MayA. D. 1711. 

Erected by the City of Mobile 

May 26, 1911. 




MISS ANNA CARLOTTA HAMILTON 



All stood in respect while the artillery fired a 
salute. 

In accepting the tablet, Mayor Pat J. Lyons 
said: 

ACCEPTANCE BY THE MAYOR. 

In accepting on behalf of the city this tablet 
commemorating the rounding out of two hundred 
years of civic life, I desire first to thank our guests 
for the honor they have conferred upon us by their 
presence and to express our appreciation of the zeal- 
ous and untiring efforts of the public-spirited citi- 
zens who have helped to bring to a successful cul- 
mination the Bicentennial celebration, particularly 
Mr. Peter Joseph Hamilton, our writer and historian. 
As the river and our harbor were the direct cause of 
our birth, so on them must depend our future. I be- 
lieve it will be only a matter of years when the char- 
acter of vessels, say 4,000 tons or less, that now 
come here, will have been driven from the seas by 
vessels of larger carrying capacity, and if in the next 
four or five years Mobile is not prepared to accom- 
moderate the vessels of the world, our natural advan- 
tages will avail us nothing. We of to-day are the 
guardians of the future ; on our efforts now will de- 
pend the degree of greatness that Avill have been at- 
tained by our dear old city, the first capital of 
Louisiana, when the tri-centennial of its foundation 
will be celebrated one hundred years hence. Now 
that we have a brighter prospect before us, let us 
work for Mobile, spurred on by success that we have 
been able to attain in the past. 

GOVERNOR O'NEAL. 

Introduced by Dr. Craighead, master of cere- 

33 



monies, Governor Emmet O'Neal was greeted with 
loud and enthusiastic applause. Governor O'Neal 
said that he was in Mobile to extend the warmest 
congratulations to the city upon the celebration of 
its two hundredth birthday. He said that it was 
his firm belief and his cherished hope that Mobile 
would realize the expectations and surpass the fond- 
est dreams of its founders and become the gateway 
of America, the commercial emporium of the States 
of the South; that he believed that Mobile was on 
the eve of a new industrial era. The speaker said 
tiiat he hoped that the tablet to Bienville would al- 
ways remain dear to the hearts of all true Mobilians 
and Alabamians, and that the people of today would 
display the same courage displayed by the Indians, 
who fought against the inroads of the French, should 
America or Alabama be invaded by a foreign coun- 
try; that he believed that there would be found in 
Mobile harbor the argosies of the nation and that 
this port would become the rival of the Eastern cen- 
ters of trade and commerce upon the completion of 
the Panama Canal.. 

DR. ALCEE FORTIER. 

Dr. Alcee Fortier, of Tulane University, repre- 
senting Louisiana, said that in the name of his excel- 
lency. Governor Sanders, of that State, it gave him 
great pleasure to congratulate Mobilians and Ala- 
bamians on the Bi-centennial celebration, for it was 
an important event in the history of the nation. He 
said none were more interested in Mobile than Louis- 
ianians and that the representatives of the people 
of Louisiana were glad to be in Mobile upon this oc- 

34 




UNVEILING THE TABLET. 



casion. He said that Mobile had enjoyed many years 
of prosperity, and God grant that Mobile may enjoy 
many more years of even greater progress. 

On behalf of the French government, Consul 
General Fi\ancastel, of New Orleans, in French ex- 
tended hearty and cordial congratulations to Mobile. 

Lord Eustace Percy, when introduced by the 
master of ceremonies, said that he regretted the ab- 
sence of his chief, British Ambassador Bryce. He 
congratulated Mobile and Alabama on behalf of 
Great Britain, however, and said that he liked to be- 
lieve that the prosperity, progress and growth of 
Mobile were largely due to the British regime. 

ANDRE LAF ARGUE, ESQ., 
of Louisiana, next spoke as follows : 

I am here the bearer of a special message from 
the Chief Executive and the inhabitants of the city 
of New Orleans to the Chief Executive and the in- 
habitants of the City of Mobile, on this its 200th an- 
niversary. Mayor Behrman of New Orleans has re- 
quested me to tell you all how much he regretted be- 
ing unable to attend your festivities. It would be 
superfluous to tell you why. Everything connected 
with the history and development of a Southern city 
is of great interest to the mayor of the metropolis of 
the South ; much more so when the city in question 
is one whose origin and foundation are as closely 
linked to those of the Crescent City as those of Mo- 
bile are. 

His honor, Martin Behrman, has asked me to 
convey to his brother mayor and to the gallant in- 
habitants of Mobile his best and sincerest wishes for 
their welfare, civil development and future pros- 

35 



perity. "While not bodily present at your festival, 
knowing him as I do and being aware of the keen 
interest which he takes in your anniversary celebra- 
tion, I have no hesitancy in stating that he is one of 
us today in spirit. 

The people of the city of New Orleans have like- 
wise requested me to tell the people of Mobile that 
they were taking special pride and special interest 
in their celebration. They are not forgetful of the 
fact that Mobile was founded by Iberville, the 
brother of that great and gallant explorer Bienville, 
who himself in turn laid the foundation of New Or- 
leans. Historically speaking, as well as from many 
other standpoints, we are brothers and I can assure 
you that the New Orleanians so identify themselves 
with your celebration, that they feel, as it were, that 
this anniversary of yours is somewhat an anniver- 
sary of theirs, just as they expect you all to feel 
w^hen we celebrate our 200th civic birthday. Two 
cities, two Southern marts, founded by two brothers, 
cannot but take a lively and kindly interest in the 
development and progress of each other, and to its 
elder sister on Mobile Bay, the city founded by Bien- 
ville on the banks of the great Mississippi Eiver 
sends today its warmest greetings and its most ar- 
dent wishes for a future commensurate with its past. 
May the city of Mobile attain that development and 
that commercial pre-eminence which it is entitled to 
by reason of its history, of its age, of its geographi- 
cal situation, and above all, by reason of the civic 
pride and energy, truly characteristic of its people. 
Mobile has done well, and mighty well, in the past, 
and we of New Orleans know and feel that it will do 

36 




GARY W- BUTT 



better in the future, and on this occasion extend to 
our brother Southerners a friendly and congratula- 
tory grasp. 

HON. E. C. M'MAHON. 

Hon. E. C. McMahon, of Montreal, representing 
the Canadian province of Quebec, delivered a force- 
ful, eloquent and masterly address. He told how 
Montreal had constructed a canal from the St. Law- 
rence river and by so doing had outgrown Quebec, 
the rival city of the province; urged support of all 
city, county and State officials and pointed out how 
much greater a city would be under these circum- 
stances. He said that the people should demand a 
thirty-five foot depth over the outer bar and repeat 
those demands until congress granted them. He 
congratulated Mobile on behalf of Canada. 

The ceremonies were concluded by distribution 
of the beautiful commemorative medal at the hands 
of the five sponsors, and the meeting was dismissed 
with a benediction by Rabbi A. G. Moses. 

VIII.— HISTORICAL ADDRESSES OF GOV. 
O'NEAL AND DR. FORTIER. 

An historical meeting at the Mobile Theatre at 
night, consisting of two enthusiastic addresses by 
Gov. Emmet O'Neal and Dr. Alcee Fortier of Tu- 
lane University, of New Orleans, was the third num- 
ber on Friday's programme. The theatre, which was 
generously tendered for the occasion by Manager 
Jacob Tannenbanm, was well filled and the 
balconies, columns, boxes and stage were dec- 
orated profusely and artistically with the colors 

37 



of five great nations, France, Spain, Great 
Britain, the Confederacy and the United States, 
which have waved over Mobile, the Stars and 
Stripes, Stars and Bars and the Tricolor of the Bi- 
centennial, pre-eminent. With red border lights 
throwing their mellow radience over those assem- 
bled on the stage, and to the strains of ''Dixie" and 
''Maryland," the curtain rose at 8 o'clock. The 
scene which greeted the audience, an array of gen- 
tlemen in evening dress seated in a semi-circle 
across the stage, "Old Glory" in evidence on all 
sides, and the gorgeousness of these colors broken 
only by green palms, was received with enthusiastic 
applause. 

Mr. F. J. Inge presided over the meeting. Gov- 
ernor O'Neal was introduced in a few well chosen 
remarks, and when he rose to speak his voice was 
drowned by thunderous applause, and he had to wait 
until the burst of enthusiasm had lulled. 

THE GOVERNOR'S ADDRESS. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — To be with you on this 
day, to offer my congratulations on the achievement 
of the past and to express my confidence and pride 
m the promise of the future, is a privilege which I 
count myself fortunate to possess and a pleasure 
the enjoyment of which I would not willingly forego. 

The two hundred years which have elapsed since 
the seat of French power, first established on the 
shores of this bay, was removed to the site of and 
became the germ of this great city, constitutes in his- 
torical perspective only a brief period, but during its 
passage the Spirit of History has brooded over this 

38 




FRANCIS J. INGE 



region, and on its narrow theatre great nations have 
not only played a part, but the genius of an indomi- 
table people has evidenced those splendid qualities 
which despite flood and storm, pestilence and war, 
have steadily wrought to this triumphant stage. 

Though Bienville was not to reap where he 
sowed, though the Lilies of France were not long 
to float over the new domain he had given to Louis, 
though Briton was to snatch from Gaul and Spaniard 
from Briton the prize of his adventurous cruise, the 
dream of the great Frenchman has materialized, and 
in the Mobile of to-day there stands its solid and en- 
during realization. 

The American occupation occurred at so early a 
period of its history that I may justly claim its de- 
velopment into an important city as an achievement 
of our own. 

The difficulties which have beset this city, 
which have impeded its growth and proved the 
fortitude of its people have been many and varied 
and of no small magnitude. In its earlier years the 
difficulty of interior communication, the lack of rail- 
roads, the undesirable character of the public high- 
ways, which still in great measure exists, but which 
I ardently hope and firmly believe will be at no dis- 
tant day overcome, com}3ined with the thinness of 
the population, furnished but meagre materials 
with which to build. Hardly had the city attained to 
a position of commercial importance before the panic 
of 1837 laid its paralyzing hand upon it; and, though 
so substantially had the foundations of its business 
interests been laid that the Bank of Moliile was one 
of the four United States banks which did not sus- 

39 



pend, the effect was necessarily to retard and seri- 
ously hinder the advancement of its interests. 

Scarcely recovered from this blow, under which 
the whole country reeled, it was in 1839, only two 
years later, nearly destroyed by fire and wasted by 
the more dreadful scourge of yellow fever. Keduced 
in population and staggering under the double mis- 
fortune, the energy and fortitude of its people rose 
superior to calamity, rebuilt its burned blocks and 
with unfaltering faith continued its steady progress. 

In 1852 it again suffered by both flood and 
fever, and again in the courage and enterprise of its 
people there lay a redeeming spirit that walking 
with them through the fiery furnace of their afflic- 
tions brought them to a re-establishment of them- 
selves in property and in business progress. 

The history of ill fortune was not yet complete- 
ly written. The Civil War laid the South in dust 
and ashes, and Mobile was not exempt from the ruin 
which accompanied it. Its port was closed, its trade 
demoralized, and it shared in the general prostration 
into which the overwhelming catastrophe of war 
had brought the whole South. 

With its homes in mourning and its business dis- 
organized, its people, animated by the noble spirit 
which sustained our country through those black 
days, having laid aside the weapon of war, resumed 
the pursuits of peace, and rebuilt upon the shattered 
remnants of their former fortunes the more splendid 
and enduring structure to which the passing years 
have brought new growth, new power and new 
promise for the future. 

The city in which we stand this day, greatly 

40 



though it has labored and greatly though it has over- 
come, is but at the beginning of its progress. 

The marvelous science of this wonderful age has 
swept away forever the fear of the pestilence before 
which Mobile twice bowed in the dust ; before an ad- 
vancing civilization which heralds the reign of mind 
and of reason and the calm judgments of an interna- 
tional court for the foolish and wicked arbitrament 
of the sword the spectre of war has almost vanished 
from the apprehensive ayes of modern nations, not 
again to reappear in bloody horror, and we must rest 
content in the firm assurance that nunc of these dis- 
asters within the control of man will again bar the 
path of this people in their destined and certain ad- 
vance to greatness and to power. 

Though there now streams through your port 
the vast riches of our exports, the productive capaci- 
ty of the South has not been realized ; as the factories 
come to the cotton fields and the mineral riches of 
Alabama, as scientific agriculture trebles the wealth 
of its fertile fields, your present commerce beside 
the volume which a few years will pour in an in- 
creasing tide will seem but a feeble trickle, 
and with the opening of the canal the rich argosies, 
whose voyages will begin and end at your wharves, 
will cover the seas of the East and of the West. 

The future of this city is indeed filled with 
promise, and thrills the heart with pride. In 
prophetic imagination I can see it grow^n opulent 
and powerful beyond any dream that ever filled the 
brain of its founders, exercising a mighty influence 
far beyond its borders and rich in all those attributes 
and qualities which stand to make a people great and 
strong. 

41 



ADDRESS OF DR. ALCEE FORTIER. 

Mr. Inge then introduced Dr. Alcee Fortier, of 
Tulane University, a descendant of L'Anglois who 
lived at Mobile in 1711, and the silvery voice and 
graceful delivery of the historian of Louisiana 
charmed everyone. Dr. Fortier said : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — I feel greatly honored 
at having been invited to deliver an address in this 
sister city to New Orleans on this interesting occa- 
sion. I feel, however, that I cannot teach this audi- 
ence anything new, for you have living among you 
Mr. Peter J. Hamilton, the distinguished historian, 
the author of ''Colonial Mobile," — one of the best 
pieces of historical work ever done in this country. 

The foundation of Mobile, two hundred years 
a^o, is an important event in the history of the 
United States, as it marks the period of the perma- 
nent settlement of Louisiana by the French and the 
introduction into that region of the admirable civili- 
zation of seventeenth century France. The small 
establishment made at Old Biloxi by Iberville in 
1699 can hardly be called a town, and the foundation 
of Mobile, and later of New Orleans, consolidated 
the colony. 

To understand the period of colonization in our 
history one should know the history of Europe at 
that time. The Spain of Charles V explains De- 
Soto's expedition and his discovery of the Mississippi 
River in 1541, and let me say here that I do not be- 
lieve that Pineda discovered our great river in 1519. 
That honor must be given to the conquistador Her- 
nando DeSoto. To understand LaSalle and Iber- 
ville one must know Louis XIV and his times. One 

42 




DR. ALCEE FORTIER 



must go to Versailles and see the magnificence of the 
court of the Grand Monarque, who, always laborious, 
firm and majestic, was the highest personification of 
royalty that the world has seen. His high-heeled 
shoes echoed only on the stairs of his palace, but his 
fingers moved soldiers and colonists like chessmen 
over the world board. The name of Louis XVI was 
given by La Salle to the immense country explored 
by him, and we are glad of it, for the Kin-g of France 
was a grand personage, in spite of his defects. 

It is well known that La Salle was murdered in 
1687 in a vain endeavor to colonize Louisiana. Short- 
ly afterwards Louis XIV was at war with William 
of Orange, whom Marshal Luxembourg defeated so 
often that this King of England could never certify 
that the French general was a hunchback, since, said 
Luxembourg, "The Prince has never seen my back, 
and I have seen his very often." 

After the treaty of Ryswick in 1697, France was 
again ready to attempt to colonize Louisiana, and 
Pierre Le Moyne d 'Iberville was chosen by the 
Phelypeaux, Pontchartrain and Maurepas to be suc- 
cessor of the heroic and unfortunate La Salle. Iber- 
ville was a brave Canadian sailor and soldier who 
proved to be a capable settler. He left Brest on Oc- 
tober 24, 1698, with two little ships, the ''Badine" 
and the "Marin," whose names are almost as impor- 
tant "in our history as those of the ships of Columbus, 
the "Santa Maria," the "Pinta" and the "Nina." 
Columbus discovered the New World, and Iberville, 
by his successful settlements, gave to France, and 
indirectly to the United States, an immense province, 
the acquisition of which by our country has made 

43 



the American Union the great power that it is to-day. 

In February, 1699, Iberville and Bienville land- 
ed on the coast of the Bay of Biloxi and Fort 
Maurepas was built near where now is Ocean 
Springs. In 1702 Iberville ordered his brother Bien- 
ville to found a town on the Mobile River, and he 
himself went to lay the foundations of the first Fort 
Louis de la Mobile, which Bienville transferred in 
1711 to the present site of your interesting and hand- 
some city. 

We are glad, ladies and gentlemen, that, as we 
have done in New Orleans, you have kept the French 
names of the streets of Mobile. We are glad to see 
here ''la Rue Royale," ''la Rue St. Louis," "la Rue 
Dauphin" and "la Rue Conti," and I hope that 
neither you or we shall ever forget our colonial 
slory. It was the foundation of our glorious Ameri- 
can history. Mobile was under the flags of France, 
Spain and of England in colonial days, and was al- 
ways worthy. Under the flag of America she has 
grown and prospered. May she continue to prosper, 
as long as God will grant her life, is the sincere wish 
of New Orleans', her younger sister. 

I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your kind 
attention. 

IX.— BANQUET AT THE BATTLE HOUSE. 

Official guests of Mobile, representatives of the 
nations which once ruled the Gulf City and promi- 
nent citizens to the number of one hundred partici- 
pated in the Bi-centennial Banquet at the Battle 
House auditorium at 9 p. m.. May 26. The beautiful 
room was magnificently decorated for the oc- 

44 




MURRAY WHEELER 



casion, the flags of the different nations represented 
in the Bicentenary ceremonies being intertwined 
upon the pillars, with large flags of Prance, Spain, 
G-reat Britain, the United States and the Confederacy- 
hanging from the balcony and draped over the stage. 
Banks of palms were tastefully arranged at the en- 
trance and the orchestra discoursed patriotic music 
from behind a screen of greenery on the stage. The 
tables were decorated with cut flowers and ferns. 
The menu, prepared under the personal supervision 
of Manager Monahan, was as follows : 

Caviar ou Toast. 

Celery. 

Olives. 

Salted Almonds. 

Essence of Fowl in Cups. 

Broiled Spanish Mackerel, Maitre d 'Hotel. 

Potatoes — Pommes. 

Broiled Spring Milk-fed Chicken. 

Asparagus Tips. 

New Potatoes. 

Bicentennial Ice Cream. 

Assorted Cakes. 

Roquefort Cheese. 

Bents Crackers 

Cafe Noir. 

After the menu had been discussed, the toast- 
nmster, Mr. Murray Wheeler, opened the programme 
of speeches with a few well-chosen remarks, stating 
at the outset that the gathering was Mobile's birth- 
day party, and, as usual upon such occasions, every- 
body was expected to say something of a congralu- 

45 



latory nature. He referred pleasantly to the repre- 
sentatives of the different nations who were present 
and to the process and prosperity of the city found- 
ed by Bienville 

CONSUL GENERAL PRANCASTEL. 

Mr, Wheeler first called upon the repre- 
sentative of France, Mr. H. Francastel, stating 
that it was his intention to call upon the speakers 
in the order in which the different flags floated 
over the city. 

Mr. Francastel said : 

L'Ambassadeur de la Republique Francaise 
aurait ete heureux d'assister en personne a ces fetes 
ou la premiere ville etablie dans le Sud par les colons 
francais eelebre le bi-centenaire de sa fondation. 
Monsieur Jusserand s'est malheueeusement trouve 
dans I'impossibilite de se rendre a cette solennite 
memorable et m'a charge, non pas de le remplacer, 
mais de ne pas laisser vide la place qui lui etait re- 
servee. 

Plus de cent cinquante ans se sont ecoules 
depuis que Louis XV. a cede aux couronnes d'Angle- 
terre et d'Espagne les vastes territoires qui etaient 
autrefois compris sous le nom de Louisiane. Et 
cependant le voyaguer qui parcourt aujourd-hui 
cette immense etendue de pays y rencontre a chaque 
pas des lacs, des fleuves, des villes et dans ces villes, 
des places et des rues qui portent tou jours les noms" 
doiit les baptiserent les anciens colons francais. 
Dans qtielques cantons, c'est la langue de ces' pion- 
niers de la premiere heure qui frappe ses oreilles ; et 
meme, si ce voyaguer est francais, il constate avec 

4G 




M. HENRI FRANCASTEL 



une emotion profonde que les descendants des colons 
de sa race gardent encore un culte touchant au pays 
de leurs ancetres. Les Creoles sont des citoyens 
americains loyaux entre tons, mais il semble qui'ils 
aient vraiment deux patries : les Etats Unis et la 
France. 

Ces sentiments font honneur aux deux nations. 
La France peutetre fiere d 'avoir jadis donne nais- 
sance a des enfants dont la descendance lui est si 
fidele. Quant aux Etats Unis, en respectant des 
sentiments aussi respectables, ils ont attire sur eux 
les benedictions de tons les vaincus et de tons les 
opprimes de ce monde et merite la reconnaissance 
des amis de la liberte. Puis cette attitude leur a 
rapidement conquis le coeur des colons englobes dans' 
rUnion. Ceux-ci se seraient, d'ailleurs, montres bien 
difficiles s'ils n'avaient adhere de bonne grace a un 
regime qui n'etait rien de moins que le regime re- 
publicain. C'etait la carte forcee sans doute, mais 
la carte etait bonne. 

J'ai dit tout a I'heure que le francais etait encore 
en usage dans certaines parties de la Louisiane ; ce 
n'est point dans ce seul Etat qu'on le goute aux Etats 

Unis : les centres de haute cultureen en font f oi. Ce 
sont meme souvent les Americains de souche uon 
francaise qui se montrent le plus curieux d'apprendre 
notre langue. II semble done au premier abord, 
qu'il faille uniquement chercher la cause de cette 
curiosite dans la pure beaute de nos chefs-d'oeuvre 
classiques et dans I'agrement et la variete de notre 
production litteraire acuelle. Je ne le pense pas : 
je vois a cette tendance une autre raison, toute sen- 
timen^ale celle-la. La langue qui aida les Americains 

47 



a conquerir I'mdependance a pour eux, j'en suis con- 
vaincu, un attrait tout particuler. 

Ce phenomene social n'est du reste qu'un des 
nombreux signes par ou se manifeste la sympathie 
des Americains pour la France. Du Nord au Sud, 
de I'Est a I'Ouest, partout sur le sol de rUnion, on 
honore les La Fayette et les Rochambeau. Dans le 
Sud, on joint au culte de ces heros celui d'hommes 
d'une illustration moins eclatante, mais qui out du 
moins/ pour les habitants de ces regions, le merite 
d'y avoir fait les premiers sentir les bienfaits d'une 
action civilisatrice. Je fais tout specialement allu- 
sion ici, chacun le devine, aux freres Iberville et 
Bienville, les creatuers de I'ancienne Louisiane. 

II serait deplorable que de semblables traditions 
se perdissent. Quand bien menie un interet de haute 
politique ne le conimanderait pas, il faudrait encore 
perpetuer ces traditions, seulement pour la beaute 
du cas. II est si rare de voir deux peuples unis par 
une amitie dont un siecle et demi bientot de change- 
ments gouvernementaux et economiques n'a pu 
ebranler la solidite. 

Je termine ici ce trop long discours et je leve mon 
verre en I'honneur de ces drapeaux que raproche ici 
une ingenieuse conception et je fais des voeux pour 
que les quatre nations dont ils sont les emblemes 
marchent toujours de concert sour leurs plis glorieux 
dans le chemin du progres social et de la civilisation. 

At the conclusion of his remarks the orchestra 
played ''Marceillaise," all present standing to drink 
a toast to France, which Mr. Francastel gracefully 
acknowledged. 

48 



f 







%■ 




LORD EUSTACE PERCY 



LORD EUSTACE PERCY. 
Lord Percy spoke for the English flag as fol- 
lows : . 

In my inexperience as a speaker I have at least 
one consolation, namely, that if my speech should 
prove dull, it would be entirely suitable to my sub- 
ject. For, coming after the gentleman who has just 
spoken on behalf of the, French government, I repre- 
sent the passing of Mobile from France to England, 
and that, I fear, is the change from a romantic 
period to a prosaic one. Englishman though I am, 
I confess that the achievements of France in the New 
World have always had a far greater fascination for 
me than those of my own country, and I could almost 
wish that it was my duty here tonight to trace the 
history of New France from its early beginnings in 
the struggling settlements round Quebec and Mont- 
real to the days when, through the efforts of the 
most adventurous explorers and most heroic mission- 
aries that the world has seen, it gradually pushed its 
outposts westwards and southwards — to Machilli- 
mackinac and Saulte Ste. Marie, to Starved Rock and 
Fort Crevecoeur — until at last, groping its way 
through the wilderness, it emerged to lay upon the 
Gulf of Mexico the foundations of an empire greater 
and more rich in promise than either New England 
or New Spain. 

But this is not my part of the story. This em- 
pire passed from the hands of its founders, and Eng- 
land entered into their labors. The change is in 
many ways a sad one ; it is the transition from poetry 
to prose; from the splendid dreams of Champlain 
and his successors to the pettiness and drudgery of 

49 



English rule ; from men like Tonty and Bienville to 
the English governors and military commanders. 
These men, honest though they v^^ere, had been bred 
in the stiff school of English officialism ; they could 
not understand the needs or desires of this half- 
formed, growing, struggling country which they 
were called suddenly to rule ; the Indians, whom the 
French had understood so perfectly, were to them a 
complete enigma. 

And yet, though I say this, I have not, believe 
me, any desire to apologize for British rule in Amer- 
ica. That rule has been subjected to much criticism, 
but it had many features of which I can never find 
it in my heart to be ashamed. I suppose that if there 
is one thing of which an Englishman may justly be 
proud it is the English civil service, and I think 
these English governors and their subordinates rep- 
resented much of what is best in the traditions of 
that service. They did not fully realize what this 
country needed, yet they earnestly desired to serve 
her; they were unselfish even where they were un- 
wise, true to their lights even where their lights were 
dim ; their ideal was an ideal of justice even where 
they did not understand what justice was. And 
while what was mistaken in their policy has passed 
away, the good has remained. For, as from France 
America had learnt what it is to dream of expansion, 
to conceive vast schemes and work for far-off ends, 
so from England she learnt something at least as 
valuable — the lesson that government and empire 
are no easy things ; that they are burdens only to be 
borne by those who are ready for great sacrifices, 
for patient, plodding toil, for the work of a life time, 

50 




J. A. JOULL^AN 



blindly spent for an end they cannot see ; that lofty 
aims and visions of empire are of no avail unless 
they are wrought to their fulfulment in the sweat of 
the brow and by the work of the hands of common 
men. In one word, you will not think that I claim 
too much when I say that it was from England that 
America learnt self-government. 

Probably no country has learnt that lesson bet- 
ter or profited by it more nobly than have these 
Southern States. No country has been called upon 
to suffer so much, from the early days of your In- 
dian wars to that great storm which swept over you 
and made you desolate fifty years ago. Yet in spite 
of all in these last fifty years you have rebuilt that 
empire which France founded here 200 years ago, 
and today with your expanding commerce, your 
growing cities, your great industries and flourishing 
agriculture, you stand amongst the foremost States 
of the Union and may well hope to win a position yet 
more splendid when the opening of the Panama 
Canal shall bring the ships of all nations to your 
ports. 

In all this I like to think that England has some 
part, that the work of those old governors was not 
in vain. But what is the part which my country can 
justly claim? Americans and Englishmen alike 
sometimes refer to England as the ''mother coun- 
try." It is a name which implies no patronage on 
either side. That name sometimes brings to my mind 
the thought of a man, old in years yet still vigorous 
and strong, who in his youth has dreamt high dreams 
and who in his life's work has done much, and still 
IF doing much, to realize them; yet who knows how 

51 



far short his work has fallen of that which he had 
hoped, and who looks above all things to see it 
brought to full accomplishment by the sons who 
have grown up around him. This is England's atti- 
tude towards you. We have seen the vision of true 
greatness and good government, and all that we have 
accomplished towards those ends has taught us how 
far we have fallen short of them — has taught us and 
made us see what good government in its highest 
sense might really mean for mankind. And thus, see- 
ing your prosperity, we ask no material share in it ; 
however great the future reserved for you may be, 
we covet you nothing. But we look to you to fulfil 
to the uttermost all the dreams which we dreamt in 
our days of youth. 

"God Save the King" was played by the or- 
chestra at the conclusion of the address, all standing 
to drink the toast to England. 

ACTING CONSUL J. L. MARTY. 

Acting Spanish Consul Marty, responding to the 
toast, *'The Spanish Flag," spoke eloquently of the 
greatness of Spain in the early days of navigation, 
referring to the voyage of Columbus in search of new 
worlds and to the subsequent explorations of the 
Spaniards, from the time of DeSoto to the date of 
the cession of Florida to the United States. Mr. 
Marty paid the highest compliments to all other na- 
tions, and was especially patriotic in his reference to 
the Spanish flag, his eloquence as he pointed to the 
baruier of his country drawing forth enthusiastic 
applause. 



52 




WAITING 



HON. GEORGE W. TAYLOR. 

Congressman Taylor was cheered as he arose, and, 
after being introduced by the toastmaster as repre- 
senting the United States, began his remarks by 
paying a tribute to all the nations represented, ex- 
tending eloquent compliments to each of the represen- 
tatives of foreign powers. Mr, Taylor devoted a con- 
siderable portion of his address to the State of Ala- 
bama, which he characterized as the greatest in the 
Union, and spoke with especial fervor relative to the 
great work that sons of Alabama were doing upon 
the Isthmus of Panama, both in engineering and 
sanitation, referring feelingly to Major William C. 
Gorgas, an Alabamian, and to Major Seibert, in 
charge of the work at the great Gatun dam. Mr. 
Taylor said that all nations had a hand in the prog- 
ress of Mobile and that the Mobile spirit was a mix> 
ture of the blood of England with that of 
France for a starter, the high temper coming from 
the Irish ; some help coming from the Dutch, and, in 
the city of Mobile as well as throughout the country, 
a goodly portion of the spirit coming from the 
most ancient of them all, the Hebrews. The ''Star 
Spangled Banner" was played at the conclusion of 
the address, all standing. 

FATHER DE LA MORINIERE. 

''The flag of the Confederacy" was responded 
to by Rev. Father E. C. De La Moriniere in a most 
eloquent manner after opening his address by a 
graceful tribute to the ladies, a number having taken 
seats in the balcony after the speeches began. The 
two words, ''Liberty and Justice," which the banner 



of the Confederacy bore, he said, were the inspira- 
tion which led the brave followers of the Lost Cause 
to give their blood and their lives rather than suffer 
dishonor. He spoke of the mothers of the South- 
land who, like the Spartan mothers of old, conjured 
their husbands and sons to go forth to battle, and 
these gave more than life itself to a cause which 
they held sacred. A glorious tribute was paid to 
General Robert E. Lee, and no less glowing tribute 
to the men behind the guns, who, he said, were 
after all, the main dependence in time of struggle. 
Deafening applause interrupted the speaker several 
times, and the cheers being almost deafen- 
ing, and at the conclusion of his address, when he 
drank the toast to the flag of the South, the orches- 
tra playing "Dixie," the speaker received an ova- 
tion. 

The State of Alabama was responded to by Gov- 
ernor O'Neal in an eloquent address, and he was 
followed by Hon. Alcee Fortier, representative of 
the Governor of Louisiana, who responded to the 
'State of Louisiana." Brief addresses were de- 
livered by Rear Admiral Aaron Ward, in command 
of the battleship fleet, and by Rear Admiral Lucien 
Young, commandant of the Pensacola navy yard, in 
response to the toast ''The United States Navy," 
and Hon. P. J. Lyons to "Mobile of To-day." 

The banquet throughout was one of the finest 
affairs of the kind ever held in Mobile, and did not 
come to a close until 1:30 o'clock a. m. 



54 




THE BICENTENNIAL MEDAL 



X.— THE MEDAL AND SOUVENIRS. 

The official colors of the celebration were the 
white and gold of the Bourbon flag, and also the 
red, white and blue of the tricolor of modern 
France. The official flower was the fleur de lis, and 
it w^as generally used. It occurred in white upon 
the blue banner on the official badge, where the 
Bourbon banner was worn by a chevalier who might 
have been D'Artagnan of a Dumas romance. To dis- 
tingnish officials from others, the badge used by 
them was red. But the special souvenir of the oc- 
casion was the commemorative medal struck by the 
city in bronze and silver. The few silver ones were 
reserved mainly for the officials, while the bronze 
medal, of the same design, was more largely dis- 
tributed. It was struck by Whitehead & Hoag, of 
Trenton, N. J. On the obverse side were portraits 
of Iberville and Bienville, with date and names un- 
derneath, and above were the words "Mobile Bicen- 
tennial 1711-1911." On the reverse was a trophy 
made up of Mobile's five flags grouped above a 
shield representing the seal of the city. Beginning 
from the left the flags were French, with the fleur 
de lis (1702), and the British (1763). On the right 
beginning from the top was the Spanish, with castle 
and lion (1780), and the Confederate battle flag 
(1861). At the top between the others was the 
American, with the date 1813. The American flag 
thus received special treatment not only because it 
belonged to two different periods, but because it is 
the national flag. The medal was praised in the 
American Numismatist as historic in design and 
beautiful in execution. 

55 



The five flag idea was carried out in a stick pin 
from the same source. It represented the reverse of 
the medal, with the addition that the projecting 
staffs of the flags were more prominent and resem- 
bled beams radiating from the shield like rays of sun, 
which was the emblem of Louis XIV. These pins 
were used with the badges and were also distributed 
by Mayor Lyons to each group of school children 
guarding the comer stones at the time that the pro- 
cession moved about the old limits. There were also 
unofficial souvenirs in the shape of post cards, and 
one of these deserves special mention. It represented 
the five flag trophy in colors and was much ad- 
mired. These souvenirs were duly used, especially 
at the social functions connected with the celebra- 
tion, such as the banquet, and the beautiful recep- 
tions given by the Athelstan, Manassas, Elks, and 
Yacht Clubs. The medal was sent in the name of 
Mobile to Montreal, Quebec, St. Louis, New York, 
Philadelphia, New Orleans and other cities connect- 
ed in history with Mobile. Those to Montreal and 
New Orleans were of silver and the others bronze. 
All were cordially acknowledged. 

XI.— HISTORIC SITES. ' 

The celebration of the Mobile Bicentenary had 
some features of lasting value. 

There are three classes of these reminders, — 
granite stones mark the old French boundaries,, as 
well as the two French wharves ; white marble stones 
showing a carved fleur de lis perpetuate the four cor- 
ners of Fort Louis, which was built by Bienville in 

56 




JOHN F. POWERS 



1711; and substantial placards of galvanized iron 
are upon houses and other places important in sub- 
sequent history. All these were determined by City 
Engineer W. Smith from actual survey based on old 
French maps and plans. 

FRENCH LIMITS. 

In the sidewalks are granite blocks bearing the 
inscription ''City Limits 1711." Of these there are 
two on Royal street, one being near the corner of St. 
Michael, and the other at the corner of Canal street. 
Royal having been the front street under the French. 
Conception was the western street at that time, al- 
though it had some other name, and so there are 
similar stones near the intersections of St. Michael 
and Conception and Canal and Conception. Fort 
Louis, however, took up a great deal of space, — ex- 
tending from our Government street down to Thea- 
tre, — and to compensate for this Bienville ran his 
city one block further west in the centre. This ad- 
ditian of one block deep runs from Government down 
to Monroe, and so at the corners where Government 
intersects Conception and Joachim are found two 
of these granite markers, and two others at the in- 
tersections of Monroe with Joachim and Conception 
again. These are placed in the sidewalks, flush with 
the pavement, and will mark forever the town as it 
was built by Bienville in 1711. 

The town which was built w^as a port, and there- 
fore the wharf is also marked. The first was made 
of cedar and extended from near the Semmes statue 
en Government street southeastwardly to Commerce 
street. Its two ends are now marked by granite 

57 



stones bearing the words ''First Wharf 1711." The 
cedar piling and beams of this wharf still exist far 
under the street pavement, but were revealed in 
part when the city cut the big storm sewer down 
Government street. When the fort was drawn in and 
reconstructed of brick in 1717 it was deemed ad- 
visible to put the wharf in front of the fort, and in 
this way the earlier embarquadere fell into decay 
and a second was built extending between Church 
and Theatre streets out to what is now Commerce. 
As Water street was within the old river 
line, what is now Commerce street then gave suffi- 
cient depth of water for the small vessels of the day. 
The two ends of this wharf are marked by similar 
pieces of granite bearing the words "King's Wharf 
1717." 

FORT LOUIS. 

The beginning of Mobile was when Bienville be- 
gan erecting Fort Louis de la Mobile, and the spot is 
marked by the memorial tablet on the Royal street 
side of the City Hall. Near there the Apalache In- 
dians began placing the cedar palisades of the north- 
west bastion of Fort Louis. The extreme corners of 
the four bastions are marked by marble posts in the 
ground, showing on the surface a fleur de lis. The 
northwest corner is in or near the Mobile county 
building on Royal street ; the northeast corner on 
Church street just east of Water. The other two 
are on Theatre street east of Water and west of 
Royal. The fleur de lis, like the inscriptions on the 
street boundary stones, are so placed as to be looked 
at from within the limits. 



58 



The fort was rebuilt of brick in 1717 somewhat 
further west, where placards mark the corners. It 
was then named Fort Conde, but under the British, 
Spanish and Americans called Fort Charlotte until 
its destruction in 1821. 

HISTORIC MARKS. 

There are, moreover, about two dozen permanent 
placards upon buildings to mark historic spots. Most 
of these are down town, but a few are further out. 
For instance, on Government street the home of Mrs. 
AVilson has the words, "Home of Augusta Evans 
Wilson, the Authoress." St. Mary's church is mark- 
ed as ''The Home of Father Ryan, the Poet Priest," 
for he claimed this as his home as well as his field of 
duty. Another Mobile writer is similarly honored, 
where the home of Elizabeth W. Bellamy is marked 
over by Washington Square. 

In the part of old Mobile north of Government 
street will be found several placards. The furthest 
north is the site of the old Slave Market, — now a 
part of the Electric Lighting Company's plant on 
Royal. On the Register office is one of the signs 
showing that Lafayette stayed there during his visit 
to Mobile in 1826, when he was royally entertained 
by the City of Mobile. On the Glennon Building is 
a bronze tablet showing that it occupies a part of the 
site of the great Indian trading house of John Forbes 
& Co., who under the Spaniards directed the Indian 
policy of the South. A little to the west is a sign on 
the building at the southwest corner of Conception 
and St. Michael streets, the house where the great 
actor Joseph Jefferson spent his boyhood. Mr. Jef- 

59 



f erson never failed to visit this place when he came 
to Mobile. The exact house is the south half of the 
building. On northwest Conti and Royal streets 
is a card showing that there lived under the French 
Chateaugne, the sailor brother of Bienville. Here 
was the first two-story house in Mobile^ and there 
was great excitement when a new governor named 
Cadillac turned him out to make room for his own 
large family. In Spanish times the church and par- 
sonage occupied the adjacent lot on Royal. 

The columns of the Pollock Theatre Building on 
the east side of Royal street are marked as the east- 
ern limit of the Great Fires of 1839, — possibly the 
idost disastrous in Mobile history. Here was the 
Mansion House, a magnificent new hotel, and the 
conflagration extended as far west as where the Ca- 
thedral now stands. A sign on the corner of Dauphin 
and Franklin commemorates the western limits of 
these great fires. They burned out the business 
lieart and most of the rest of the little city, and the 
disaster was all the greater because at the same time 
came a disastrous epidemic of yellow fever. Those 
^ho passed through it cannot speak of 1839 without 
a shudder. 

The Kirkbride walls on Theatre street mark the 
first jail, a bastion of Fort Charlotte, and the house 
at the northwest corner of Royal and Theatre is 
where Ludlow built the first theatre in Mobile in 
1823, and thus gave the name to the street. 

On another part of the Fort Esplanade we find 
also some signs. Thus the residence of Dr. Acker, 
on St. Emanuel and Government, is marked as the 
home of Octavia Walton LeVert, the famous au- 

60 



tlioress, whose Souvenirs of Travel in the fifties 
made a literary epoch. This place was also the 
scene of her brilliant salons. Across the street 
Scheible's drug store stands where the British com- 
mandant, Maj. Farmar, lived, and there after him 
lived the Spanish commandants of Mobile. 

St. Emanuel street contains other historic spots. 
Christ Church bears a sign showing that it was 
the site of the first Protestant Church, — a frame 
building with a square tower in front. There all 
Protestants worshipped together in the twenties, and 
from it went out first the Methodists and then the 
Presbyterians in the thirties. This Union Church 
was built about the same time as, the theatre not 
far away. Across Church street, at the southwest 
corner of St. Emanuel, another of the signs tells of 
much earlier times^ as on that corner, — of course in 
:a different house, — lived the celebrated St. Denis, 
who was one of the most romantic characters in 
Louisiana history. He was a military free lance, and 
went overland to Mexico on the most famous com- 
mercial and love-making expedition of Bienville's 
day. 

In the part of Mobile south of the old fort limits 
we find a sign on Royal and Monroe streets showing 
where Bienville himself lived in 1711. The present 
house of course is later, but he owned a whole 
square and lived there. On the block next south a 
sign tells us there lived in Spanish times Don Mignel 
Eslava, a most influential man. Among his titles 
was Ro.yal Treasurer. 

In the early American times Conti street was a 
more famous highway than it is now, and on it were 

61 



several places which bear these historic placards. 
At the southeast corner of Conception was the Indian 
Council House, around which were encamped the 
many Indian tribes which visited Bienville in his day 
and the English and Spanish rulers afterwards. It 
was a long shed covered with bark, and the scene of 
many grave discussions. The fate of the colony was 
decided there more than once. Further down Conti 
street, at the corner of St. Emanuel, the German Re- 
lief Building and the city prison mark the site of the 
Government House of British times. There under 
the early Americans the Spanish Royal Bakery, fa- 
mous as a landmark, gave way to the first Mayoralty 
or Municipal Building. 

Continuing down Conti we pass Chateaugue's 
house already described, and on the Adam Glass 
v^^arehouse east of Royal we find it noted that this' 
was the Court House of troubled Reconstruction 
days. Much happened there that is now forgotten, — 
and perhaps it is just as well. 

OLD GRAVE YARD. 

The Old Grave Yard on Church street has many 
ancient memorials of its own, the earliest being a 
cross bearing the date of 1818, but hardly anything 
more interesting and tragic happened there than is 
noted in a placard on the north wall. Near it is 
buried Charles S. Boyington, indicted, condemned 
and executed for the murder of his friend, Charles 
Frost, also a printer, in the year 1835, on evidence 
circumstantial, but strong. Boyington was a man of 
education and refinement, although of bad habits at 
that time, and his case excited general interest. Al- 

62 



though bound, he tried to escape from the scaffold 
but was recaptured aud forcibly hanged. It was 
said that after the Civil War some negro was exe- 
cuted in Georgia for an offense, and before dying 
confessed that he had murdered Frost in Mobile. 
This may be mere rumor, but lends a sad interest to 
the northwest corner of the Old Grave Yard, where 
the murder was committed and where Boyington 
was buried. The case is reported in 2nd Porter 
Supreme Court Reports, page 100. 

THE OLD CANNON. 

While not placed in connection with the Bicen- 
tennial, the cannon in the public places are part 
of Mobile's history. 

Possibly the oldest is a long raking piece near 
the northeast corner of Bienville Square. It is 
French and is possibly the only piece surviving from 
the French times. Like most of the others it came 
from Fort Charlotte w^hen demolished m 1818 and 
protected the street curbs at St. Michael and Water 
streets until the Iberville Historical Society placed 
it in the Square when street improvement made the 
moving of it necessary. Also in the Square is a large 
British piece of ordnance having the broad arrow 
and the entertwined G. R., — for Georgius Rex. This 
was in Fort Charlotte in British times, 1763 to 1780. 

In Duncan Place is a large Spanish piece also 
from Fort Charlotte, and dating between 1780 and 
1813. This last is handsomely mounted by the gen- 
erosity of William Butler Duncan of New York, for 
whom the lower end of Government street was re- 
named. Further east on Government is a large Con- 

63 



federate cannon brought up from Fort Morgan and 
mounted by Mr. Duncan. 

In AVashington Square are two old cannon, and 
on Government pointing down Michigan avenue is a 
24-pounder which was on the H. M. S. *' Hermes" 
during the first attack on Fort Bowyer in August, 

1814. The Hermes was sent on fire by the American 
cannonade and abandoned by the British. After the 
enemy left, the Americans took out this and prob- 
ably other cannon and used them on the British dur- 
iiig the second battle of Fort Bowyer in February, 

1815. The defense was unsuccessful, however. The 
cannon, therefore, fought on both sides — and lost 
each time. After Fort Morgan was built the piece 
was used as a base or lever for moving other cannon, 
being buried and ropes passed through the ring at 
the breech end. On the reconstruction of the fort 
during the Spanish-American War the carronade 
was dug up and subsequently removed to Mobile for 
permanent preservation. 

XII.— CONCLUSION. 

The celebration was concluded with rides and 
other social courtesies to the invited guests. On Sat- 
urday, May 27th, Lord Eustace Percy, M. Francastel 
and others Avent in autos as far as Spring Hill Col- 
lege, where they Avere cordially received. On Sun- 
day morning there were special services in almost all 
churches, recalling the religious history of the city 
or of the particular congregations. 

The lesson of the celebration cannot be better 
summed up than in the words of Saturday's edito- 
rial in the Mobile Register : 

64 



THE BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 

Mobilians received many eongrelations yester- 
day for the excellent manner of their celebration of 
the Bicentennial of the founding of the city. The 
night parade of the Red Men and the Mystics, with 
the illumination of the square and the principal 
streets, gave the affair a good start Thursday. Yes- 
terday's ceremonies, the imposing parade that 
''bounded" the ancient lim.its of Mobile, the hand- 
some display made by the jackies from the warships, 
the volunteer soldiery of Mobile, the boys of the 
military school, the students of Spring Hill College, 
with their find band of music, the United Confeder- 
ate Veterans, the Spanish Benevolent Society and 
the other benevolent organizations, the beautiful lit- 
tle ladies who impersonated the five flags that waved 
over Mobile, all elicited applause from beginning to 
end of the line, while the patriotic exercises by the 
schools at the corner marks were features' of lively 
interest. The unveiling ceremonies, too, were well 
carried out, notwithstanding the glare of the almost- 
summer sun, all having part therein acquitting them- 
selves to the entire satisfaction of the enormous gath- 
ering of people in the Place of Five Flags, opposite 
the City Hall. The historic orations at the Mobile 
Theatre, delivered at night by the Governor of Ala- 
bama and by Dr. Alcee Fortier of New Orleans, rep- 
resenting the Governor of Louisiana, crowned the 
public exercises in a manner most admirable. Then 
followed the civic banquet, in the handsome audito- 
rium of the Battle House, whereat gathered and 
feasted the city's guests, the representatives of the 
Federal and State Governments, and the navy, of 

65 



the State of Louisiana, of Canada, of France, of 
Great Britain, of New Orleans and Montreal. It was 
a brilliant affair, more so than any of the same order 
ever given in Mobile. 

Taken altogether it was a celebration worthy of 
the city that has the honor of being the first capHai 
of Louisiana, and w^orthy of a people who take pride 
in the history of their city and in what has beeji ac- 
complished here in civic development. 

There is no record of any celebration of the 
first centennial anniversary. Indeed, it has becu 
said that Mobile had little in 1811 to celebrate, being 
hardly greater then than at a period one hundred 
years earlier. The growth of Mobile has been ih'"' 
result of American influence and enterprise, the join- 
ing of this territory to the United States being \hn 
signal for commercial and industrial development, 
which has reached its highest point in our own day. 
Not the highest yet to be reached, however ; for from 
this as the beginning, we expect the third century 
of Mobile to far eclipse the second, and that our de- 
scendants, one hundred years from now, will cel-^- 
brate in what will be known as a world-city. Every- 
thing is possible for Mobile with her geopraphical 
position, the resources behind her and the world 
opening in front. The Canal across the isthmus will 
make the Gulf the Mediterranean of this contineTir. 
and Mobile should become the new Venice, the mis- 
tres of the Western seas. 

We of 1911 send our greeting up the line of 
years to Mobilians of 2011, wishing them success and 
honor in the repetition of the ceremony that it was 
our pleasure to participate in yesterday, the twenty 
sixth of May. 

66 




BIENVILLE (After Margry) 
b. 1680 — d. 1768 



PRINTED FOR THE BIENVILLE 

MONUMENT FUND, MOBILE. 

From "Colonial Mobile.'' 



THE FOUNDING 
of MOBILE 

1702-1718 

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY 
OF THE FIRST CAPITAL OF 
THE PROVINCE OF LOUIS- 
IANA, WITH MAP SHOWING 
ITS RELATION TO THE 
PRESENT CITY 

PETER J. HAMILTON, L.L.D. 

AUTHOR OF 
"COLONIAL MOBILE." ETC. 






MOBILE 

Commercial Printing Company 
1911 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

These studies were made in connection with the 
celebration in May, 1911, of the Bicentenary of 
the founding of Mobile and in their original form 
were published in the Mobile Register. They have 
now been revised and it is hoped improved. 

The map at the end was drawn under the super- 
vision of Wright Smith, the City Engineer of Mo- 
bile, and shows the French town relative to the ex- 
isting American city. The route of the bicenten- 
nial parade around the French limits is also indi- 
cated. At the turning corners granite posts are 
placed in the sidewalk. 

These studies are perhaps disconnected, but centre 
about the institutions of the time when Mobile was 
the First Creole Capital. They are based upon man- 
uscript and early sources and are in a large measure 
independent and supplementary to my ''Colonial 
Mobile." 

P. J. HAMILTON. 

Mobile, 1911. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I. FORT LOUIS. 

Page. 

1. — French Colonization 5 

II.— Vieux Fort 8 

III. — First Directory 12 

IV. — Bienville's Coat of Arms 17 

V. — Religion 7 21 

VI.— The Social Side 24 

VII.— A Colonial Menu 28 

VIII.— The Mosquito Fleet 31 

II. MOBILE. 

IX. — The removal as Told by the Removers .... 35 

X.— New Mobile 44 

XL— The Great Hat Question 50 

XII. — A Chateau on the Bay 54 

XIII. — Infant Industries 57 

XIV.— Colonial Homes 62 

XV. — Place Names that Survive 65 

HI. CROZAT AND AFTER. 

XVI. — Colonial Government 69 

XVII. — Expansion 74 

XVIIL— The First Law Book 78 

XIX.— The Soldiers 83 

XX.— First Shipping List 88 

XXL— Cradle and the Grave 92 

XXIL— Indian Trade 98 

XXIIL— Conclusion 102 

(Map showing relation of French town to modern 
city at end.) 



I. 

FORT LOUIS. 

I.— FRENCH COLONIZATION. 

Of all the movements of races, those following the 
discovery of America are the most interesting. They 
brought our ancestors to America, dispossessed the 
aboriginal tribes, and changed the current of the 
world's history. Being within historical times, the 
facts can be easily traced. The settlement of the 
coast of the Gulf of Mexico has features of local im- 
portance, but cannot be understood except as a part 
of a world movement^ a readjustment of population. 

Colonization in all ages has had several motifs, 
and it so happened that Spain, who was first in the 
field, chose one of only temporary value. Columbus 
had stumbled on America on his way to India, but 
the Spaniards found so much gold and silver in 
South America and Mexico that they were willing 
enough to leave India to be fought for by the Portu- 
gese, French and English. Even in North America, 
Spain, through DeSoto and others, explored rather 
than colonized. The idea of developing colonies for 
the benefit of the colonists was left for our day, but 
that of developing products to be manufactured for 
the home market was to dawn upon the French and 
English, although it did not upon the Spaniards'. 
Possibly that country will win in the long run as a 
colonizer which has the most surplus population. 
Spain had none to spare, but it so happened that an 

5 



economic readjustment in England, followed by re- 
ligious persecutions, drove many yoemen to a sea- 
faring life. This brought knowledge of the new 
world and supplied it with colonists. How far this 
was true of France remained to be seen, but cer- 
tainly its gradually centralizing government was 
able to use for any purpose, at home of abroad, 
whatever means that country afforded. 

The two nations settled Virginia and Canada in 
almost the same year, French Quebec in 1606 being 
only one year ahead of English Jamestown. It was 
to lead to a long and interesting rivalry in coloniza- 
tion. Over a century and a half were to pass before 
the result was decided. It is true that the French 
had made earlier attempts. Both Brazil and Caro- 
lina were colonized under Huguenot auspices, and 
so short-lived was Coligny's power that both were 
unsuccessful. In North America characteristically 
Virginia was a commercial venture. Massachusetts 
a few years later was a religious experiment, while 
Canada, was not a popular but a royal effort. Eng- 
land took her third colonial step in colonizing on 
the old French ground of Carolina, just as the 
French LaSalle made his famous prise de possession 
at the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1682. Eng- 
lish colonization was confined to the Atlantic coast, 
and expanded in a gradual advance as county or 
township was settled; the French colonization lay 
in the occupation of the St. Lawrence basin by a 
nobility, who settled their lands with retainers, but 
allied to this was the exploration by coureurs de 
bois, — w^oodsmen, — and voyageurs, who carried 
French influence everywhere. 

Quebec and Montreal had been settled upon the 



great northeru French River. The Mississippi, how- 
ever, ran not through Laureutian rocks, but through 
an alluvial country which furnished no good resting 
place for a capital. The St. Lawrence was wide, 
and a sailing vessel of the day could ascend it as 
easily as it could go anyw^here at sea. The Missis- 
sippi was not such an arm of the sea. It was wide, 
to be sure, but deep and winding. Sailing vessels 
could make little headway against its current and 
along its tortuous course. For that reason no per- 
manent settlement was made near its mouth. La- 
Salle had such a plan, but the practical Iberville 
thought a small earthwork sufficient to hold pos- 
session there, while his capital was to be on the sea- 
coast. Temporarily he might have his headquarters 
at Biloxi, but he explored for a more fertile seat for 
his colony. 

Wherev^' it might be, it Avould be another seat 
of empire. The British began with their two types, 
Cavalier Jamestown and Puritan Plymouth. The 
French had Quebec in the north, and now in the 
south were to establish another capital. Two fea- 
tures stand out. With the French there was greater 
leadership. Champlain in the north and Iberville 
in the south were greater names than the British 
colonizers furnished. Again, the French penetrated 
further and acquired a greater hegemony over the 
natives than did the English yeomen, who hugged 
the coast and stayed close together. Perhaps the 
national characteristics of brilliancy and pluck 
were pitted against each other, and it would be in- 
teresting to see how they worked out the future be- 
fore them. The British had the advantage in num- 
bers and in foci ; for there were when Mobile was 



founded, not only Boston and Williamsburg, which 
had succeeded Plymouth and Jamestown, but con- 
quered New Amsterdam and pacific Philadelphia 
between, and the new Charleston w^as becoming a 
strong centre of influence. Against those could be 
opposed by the French only Quebec and Montreal in 
the north and Mobile in the south; but they con- 
trolled the greatest river basins in America, were 
united in spirit, and were wielded by the greatest 
king of modern times. 

The rivalry was not unequal and the building of 
the southern capital was carrying out the plan to 
make a greater New France. There was little to 
choose between the qualities of the two races. There 
might be a choice between their institutions, but 
new conditions would equalize these. If France 
could spare as many people as England, and the 
colonies of both races multiplied equally, there 
would be a New England on the Atlantic, and a 
New France occupying the much greater St. Law- 
rence and Mississippi Valleys. In the working out 
of this lies the import of the story of Louisiana 
and her first capital in the time of Iberville and his 
brothers. 

II.— VIEUX FORT. 

It seems that the original condition of mankind 
was that of families and clans, either as wandering 
herdsmen or settled agriculturists. The town or 
city was a gradual evolution, which reached its per- 
fection among the Romans. When the Romans sent 
out colonists, however, they made the town the basis 
of their colonization, and the European nations fol- 
lowed suit in their efforts of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. It was an inversion of the 



natural process, and yet probably a necessity of the 
case. The colony must have a centre, a capital, both 
for communication with the home country and for 
influence among the natives. For this reason the 
story of the capital is of importance. In fact, to 
some extent the capital was the colony. 

When it becomes necessary, therefore, to select a 
site for his colony, Iberville made a careful inspec- 
tion of all the Gulf coast w^est of Pensacola. The 
Mississippi current was too strong, and the lands 
near its mouth too marshy to admit of settlement. 
The post at Biloxi w^as never intended for a capital, 
but merely as a temporary settlement. 

The four great Indian tribes of the south w^ere 
the numerous Choctaws about Mobile and Tombig- 
bee Rivers, the warlike Chickasaws between the 
sources of the Tombigbee and the Mississippi, the 
Muscogees, whom the French called the Alibamons 
from the loAvest subdivision on their river, and the 
Cherokees in the mountains behind the English set- 
tlements on the Atlantic. There were many other 
tribes, but even on the Mississippi each was few 
in numbers. Strange to say, the presence of a small 
tribe on Mobile River had much to do with the se- 
lection of the site, for the Mobilians there were not 
only thought to be the influential Movila whom De- 
Soto had all but exterminated in 1540, but theirs 
was the trade jargon or international language un- 
derstood from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Some 
still flourished, among the Alibamons near modern 
Claiborne. Both to watch the English and and in- 
fluence the natives, therefore, a site on the Mobile 
River, w^iich was made up of the Alabama and the 



Tombigbee, was appropriate. On the other hand, 
Mobile Bay offered great advantages. At its mouth 
was Dauphine Island, which was found to have an 
admirable harbor at the east end, w^hich was named 
Port Dauphin. There was also an eastern entrance 
to the bay, but that by Port Dauphin was thought 
jnore available. Ships could unload at Port Dau- 
phin and have their cargoes transferred by traver- 
siers and other boats to the river settlement. The 
river bluff and island port, therefore, could make 
up a capital, and this was what the fertile mind of 
Iberville determined. 

On his second voyage, while lying sick in Pensa- 
cola Bay, he directed Sauvole and Bienville to move 
everything from Biloxi to IMassacr^ Island with a 
view of making a permanent establishment upon 
the river sixteen leagues from the Gulf. 

The new town was founded on January 16, 1702, 
and work continued incessantly. On March 19, La- 
Salle, who performed the functions of commissaire 
de marine, arrived and found the streets aligned, 
the magasin completed, and the palisaded fort of 
four bastions ready for use. The settlement was 
reached from a landing, where a small creek makes 
into the river, and one ascended the hill to the south 
by the main highway along the river bluff. At in- 
tervals were cross streets, named for residents, and 
the southern extremity of the town was Fort Louis, 
sometimes called de la Mobile and sometimes de la 
Louisiane. In front of it on the river bank was the 
pow^der magazine, and Avest of the town was a 
ravine, and beyond a slight outpost. The fort was 
on a bend and overlooked the river in both direc- 
tions, while across were the marshy Islands of the 

10 



delta, which were to afford some rich agricultural 
grounds. 

The town gradually grew. In 1704 a church was 
built near the fort by the liberality of Gervaise, a 
pious priest who w^as unable to come out, and north- 
west on the sources of the creek was the Seminaire, 
where the Seminary priests lived. The west side of 
the fort was taken up by the chapel, d large building 
which served also as church for the settlement. As 
the town was built southwards, a well was dug a 
block or two inwards from the fort, and about it 
was the Marche, the assembly and playground of 
Mobile. There was also a kind of resort on the 
banks of the creek, and in the woods behind the 
town the little cemetery, which was, like all grave- 
yards, to grow in size. From the yellow fever epi- 
demic in 1704 it was a populous spot. 

In 1702 Iberville brought over four families, and, 
despite occasional want, — as in 1706 acutely, — all 
learned to love the place. When D'Artaguette came 
in 1708 to investigate the complaints of the priest 
and of the commissaire he found that all had been 
done which could be expected, and the colonists 
unanimously declared themselves satisfied with 
their surroundings. All they wanted was horses to 
help cultivate the soil. 

A traversier was built and plied regularly to Port 
Dauphin, and gradually all along the river, and even 
on the bay shore, French settlements arose, some- 
times villages, but generally habitans Avith their lit- 
tle farms. 

The settlement was double in character, it is look- 
ed towards France and towards the interior. It 
was the seat of trade and diplomacy with the three 

n 



great tribes up the rivers, and even with the Chero- 
kees beyond, and as a result the influence of the 
English was soon broken. They had traded to the 
Mississippi River, but this great wedge soon all but 
shut them out. The Choctaws became firm allies of 
the French, and the French contended on equal 
terms with the British for influence among the up- 
per tribes. 

The new settlement marked a distinct advance in 
town building in America. All others founded be- 
fore it, from Jamestown and Quebec to Charleston, 
were within walls and fortifications. Even the land 
of pacific Philadelphia had been bought from the 
natives. French influence, however, was such that 
no cession was needed from the Indians for the set- 
tlement on the Mobile, and no walls or fortifications 
were built about it. It w^as open to the world. It 
is true that in its centre was a fort, but this was 
more for protection against Europeans than against 
the natives. In none of the correspondence or state 
papers of the day is there expressed the slightest 
fear of the Indians. Mobile from its foundation to 
the end of the French regime was the centre of the 
Indian trade and diplomacy, and only at one time 
was it in any danger from the natives, and that was 
long after it ceased to be the capital. 

III.— FIRST DIRECTORY OF MOBILE. 
Fort Louis de la Mobile at TAventy-seven Mile 
Bluff was established in 1702 and despite w^ars in 
Europe soon became a flourishing town. A map 
was made the year of the foundation, and one 
marked ^'un peu avant 1711" not only shows a 
place of double the size, but indicates its growth to 
have been southwardly. 

1-2 



The first thing which attracts attention on this 
map is the fort, which seems to be looked at from 
above, — as if there was an aeroplane in use. Fort 
Louis is square, with bastions at each corner. From 
the northeast bastion on the river floats the white 
flag of France, and the west side of the fort is 
wholly taken up by a large church with steeple, 
surmounted by the predecessor of M. Rostand's 
Chantecler. The parapets are all covered, the 
roofs being plainly visible. The fort is near the 
river and on the north, west and south sides of it 
]ies the large ''Place Royale", — doubtless the drill 
ground of that day. 

As at first built the town sloped up to the left 
from a little stream falling into the river, just as 
with the village of Longueuil on the St. Lawrence. 

In 1702 the town extended from the creek (ruis- 
seau) about »three blocks down to the fort. On the 
new map as much of a town as previously existed 
is shown to have grown up west of the fort, and an- 
other section almost as large southwest of the fort 
about the market place. AYhile houses are not indi- 
cated, we are told that they were there in abund- 
ance, and the names of the residents are given in de- 
tail. ]\Iany are the same as found on the map of 1702, 
but there are a number of names peculiar to this 
second map. 

The town might be said to be in three or four dis- 
tricts. The old settlement was that on the creek to 
the north of the fort. On the creek itself was the 
brickyard near the river and what may be a pleasure 
report (Beau sejour) further up stream, while north 
of the creek was nothing but the woods. Higher up 
the creek was the Seminaire. residence of the priests 

13 



from Quebec, with their garden adjacent. Near it 
was the place of greatest interest, — the "simitiere," 
where, without doubt, the great explorer Tonty lies 
buried with his iron hand. A branch from the 
creek heads up by the cemetery. 

What we may call the second district of the town 
lay on three streets running west from Place Royale. 
This section was thickly settled. 

The south district of the town w^as growing up 
about the market place, "le Marche", with the brick 
well in the centre. The king reserved some land im- 
mediately south of the Place Royale, and Bienville, 
with an eye to the future, secured a tract south of 
this, perhaps, with a view of making Bienville's 
First Addition when the town grew. 

The highway running along the river is not 
named, nor are those bounding the city on the west 
and on the south. The other streets are very much 
named; for the same street will change its name 
every block or so, quite as in the Paris of that day. 
Parallel with the river and running through the 
west side of the Place Royale was the street which 
bore the name St. Francois at its northern extremity 
and further south the names of Ste. Marie, de Rues- 
savel, Chateauguay. Next Avest of that was Boute- 
ville, St. Joseph, de Tonti, Becaneour, Juchero, and 
St. Denis. Next west was the last street with a 
name, called Seminaire where it begins opposite the 
Seminary, and then Pontchartrain further south. 

The highw^ays running east and west change 
names in a somewhat similar manner. The first was 
near the river called Charpentie, and further west 
Marais (marsh). Next down the river was the 
street of the Jesuits, bearing also the name LaSalle 

14 



and St. Anne. Streets running west from t"he cor- 
ners of the Place Royale were called respectively for 
Yberville and Serignie, his brother. One between 
was named for the distinguished soldier Boisbril- 
lant, but towards the west bore also the name of 
Gue, — which is difficult to understand, unless the 
ford (gue) ran across the marsh which existed Avest 
of the town. The last street towards the south was 
called for Bienville. 

Among the prominent residents were Yberville, 
Bienville, St. Denis, LaSalle and Boisbrillant, and 
that most remarkable of all liars in the history of 
the world, — Matheiu Sagean, w^ho pretended to have 
explored the whole interior of North America. 

Some one has said that a dictionary is interesting 
reading, but changes the subject quite often. De- 
spite a corresponding defect, the first directory of 
Mobile given by streets will be found of interest. 
Some of the names were familiar for many years 
afterwards. 

On the unnamed front street beginning at the 
north and going south were Pouarie, La Loir, Le 
Conte, Saucie, Jesuits, LaSalle, and D 'Yberville. In 
the same way on St. Fransois was a long list, al- 
though at the Place Royale, the street had but one 
side. On it w^ere Dame Dieu, L'Esperance, La 
Fontaine, Goulard, Jaque Boullet & ses gens, Talle- 
ment, Boutin, Jesuits, Lamery, Francoeur, Trepag- 
nier, Claude, Minet. St. Marie, LeSueur, Le Vasseur, 
Boisbriliant, Place Royale, La Loir, Gerard, Sa 
v^arie, Boyer, Le Moine, Louis Le Dieu. Sabastien Le 
Breton, Alexandre, LaFleur, L 'Assure. What sort 
of people were M. Dieu and Dame Dieu? 

On St. Joseph street were in the first place Beau 

15 



Sejour, which may be conjectured to be a pleasure 
resort, — at least for mosquitoes there by the creek, 
—-and then follow on both sides of the street the 
longest list of all, — La Chenesgaulle, Charle Dumont, 
Marais, Dumont cadet, Jardin du Seminaire, Jean le 
can, Magdeleine Poulard, Jacque La Pointe, Denis 
Durbois, Chavier & Brother, Dominique, Francois 
Montreuil, Ayote, De Tonti, Charleville, Pierie, La- 
folett. Jacque La Barre, Lezie Larcois, Rouffain, 
Charle Regnault, Jean Alexandre, Beccancour, La- 
force, La Fleur, Duhaut Meni, Juchero, Pierre 
Isogui, Antoine Priau, Francois Marie bourne, St. 
Denis, St. Marin, Alexie Gry, Birott, Andre Pene- 
gau and Robillard. 

On Seminaire was the ''Simitiere" and then the 
following : Pierre Le Sueur, Roy, De Launy, Neveu, 
Neveu L'aine, LaLiberte, Des List, Nicolas Laberge, 
Francois Trado, Le Boeuf, La Valle, Le Source, 
Manuelle du hautmeny, Chauvin L'aine, La 
Frenniere. 

On the unnamed west boundry street, all on the 
east side, were the following : Rochon, Charli, 
Legat, Antoine Rinard, Martin Moquin, Zacare Dra- 
peau, and Langlois. 

This does not quite exhaust the list, for there were 
some residents on the cross streets who were not on 
corners, and thus not also on the north and south 
streets. In order to complete the list and make one 
feel at home in walking about these early streets, 
they are subjoined as follows : On Charpentie 
street Avere Jean Partie, Condits and Louis Dore. 

On Jesuit street Avere Le Vetias, Regnault and 
Alain. On the north side of the Place Royalle was 
Poudrie. On Yberville street was Joseph La Pointe, 

16 



Dardine, Fransois Hainelle, Potie, Berichon and 
Darocque. On Boisbrillant were LeGascon, Cour- 
tois and Le Nantois. On Serignie street were five, 
as follows: , Charle Miret, Pierre Ardouin, Jean 
Francois Levasseur, St. Lambert de haut Meni, and 
Michel Philippe. Last of all on Bienville street came 
the famous Matieu Sajan and Jean Saucie. 

Many of the leaders were Canadians and not a few 
of the habitans. Trudant. was a carpenter from 
Longueuil, as were Lapointe and Poudrie, and Bon- 
oist soon came also. Montreal was the mother of 
Mobile. 

IV.— BIENVILLE'S COAT OF ARMS. 

In the flourishing city of Montreal they have not 
only kept the names of the old streets— one named 
for Charles Le Moyne— and marked with bronze 
tablets the prominent historical spots, but some of 
the colonial buildings have been preserved intact. 
The Chateau de Eamezay, the residence of the 
colonial governors, is now the home of historical 
society, and its wall, gardens and rooms have been 
restored as nearly as possible to their original con- 
dition. In the hall containing portraits of famous 
Canadians stand several of the Le Moyne family, 
including Charles, the immigrant from Normandy, 
and several of his distinguished sons. Amongst 
these is Jean Baptiste, whom the father named de 
Bienville, from a spot dear to him in the old coun- 
try. 

Charles le Moyne was one of the early settlers of 
Ville Marie, or Montreal, and in recognition of dis- 
tinguished colonial services received several grants 
of land. One was Longueuil, granted in 1657 on 

17 



the south side of the St. Lawrence, almost opposite 
Montreal. After a while he seems to have built a 
chateau over there and lived in Longueuil during 
the summer. He was seigneur of this? concession and 
of others. 

Among Canadian scholars it is agreed that the 
seigneurial system was the making of Canada. It 
was based upon land grants, having a front on the 
St. Lawrence river and extending back in depth 
several times the front, subdivided by the seigneur 
among his own tenants. A common road was re- 
quired to be made along the river from one seig- 
neurie to another, but the most interesting features 
were those within each concession. The seigneur 
had a manor house surrounded by his own grounds, 
generally on some commanding knoll, while the 
fields of his tenants stretched far and wide. As far 
as possible each one was given a front on the St. 
Lawrence, but this was not always feasible. They 
may still be traced in the long, narrow fields. The 
profits of the seigneur consisted of his rents, per- 
haps in produce, later generally commuted into a 
small money payment, and in the rights and banali- 
ties which the tenants were bound to respect. If 
the seigneur had a mill, the tenant must grind his 
wheat there for a certain consideration. Perhaps 
even more important was the right of holding court, 
— with high, low or middle justice. — varying accord- 
ing to the extent of his jurisdiction, and incidentally 
bringing in fees and fines. The Seigneurie of Lon- 
gueuil was two leagues on the river by almost double 
in depth. It had its mill, landing place and light- 
house. And a delightful place of residence it is, 
stretching now as a village along a rambling street 

18 



overlooking the St. Lawrence, faced by old-fash- 
ioned story and a half houses, with their galleries, 
the ancestor of our own, and a beautiful church 
guarding it all. 

Here Bienville spent much of his childhood, and 
he naturally desired to introduce the same system 
into Louisiana. Originally the feudal system was 
based on the idea, common even now, of renting 
one's. land for services rendered, but in time it had 
hardened into very oppressive services. Although 
it worked well in Canada, for some reason Louis 
XIV and his successors felt that the seigneurial plan 
was not applicable on the Gulf. From the first the 
king steadfastly declined to erect seigneuries in that 
province, and when at last he did it was only on a 
part of the Mississippi River below Manchac, and 
the system seems to have had little influence upon 
the development of the colony. Bienville, therefore, 
never rose to the dignity of a seigneur, although the 
shape of the grants about Mobile was based on the 
seigneuries of Canada. 

Bienville obtained Horn Island, but not by a seig- 
neurial tenure. He owned a whole block of land 
on the south of both Mobiles, one bounded on the 
west by St. Charles street, — now our St. Emanuel. 
This seems to be a reminder of Montreal. St. Charles 
street there was named for the patron saint of the 
elder Le Moyne, and the existence of a St. Charles 
street in Mobile and of one in New Orleans, — both 
cities founded by Bienville, — seems to point back to 
a memory of childhood. 

Bienville was called Sieur, but that is compli- 
mentary and not an abbrevation of seigneur; for ex- 
cept in a military way. Bienville seems to have had 

19 



no title. He had, so far as we know, no individual 
coast of arms, but the family were proud of that of 
his father, Charles Le Moyne, used at Longueuil, and 
preserved in the Chateau de Kamezay. 

As with all others, it consists of a large shield 
surmounted by a crest, the helmet itself surmounted 
by a man standing, with an arroAV, in a log fort. 
Underneath is the motto, ''Labor et Concordia." 
On each side is a standing Indian, a man and woman 
holding an arrow. The main thing, however, is the 
shield and its ornaments. The upper third is red, 
and on it are two gold stars, five pointed, with a 
gold crescent between them. The lower two-thirds 
of the shield has a blue ground, and on it are found, 
placed in a triangle, three gold stars, also five point- 
ed, and each with a gold rose in its centre. It is odd 
that two such antipodal men as Martin Luther and 
Charles Le Moyne should have the rose as an em- 
blem. To Catholic and Lutheran it smelt as sweet. 

The meaning of the different devices would take 
us far back into heraldry, for each means some- 
thing; but at least Bienville lived up to the family 
motto of ''Labor and Concord." These arms, be it 
noted, were not those of the barony of Longueuil, as 
such ; for this was not created until 1700, in the 
hands of Charles Le Moyne, Jr., Bienville's oldest 
brother, while Bienville was in Louisiana. The 
arms were granted their father in 1668, before Bien- 
ville's birth, and were in some sense shared by all 
those eleven Le Moyne children who made the name 
famous throughout the world. It was not the fash- 
ion then to have an engraved crest for a letterhead ; 
but seals were more used than they are now, and 
Bienville was a good correspondent when occasion 

20 



offered. So Ave may suppose that just as he affixed 
an official seal to his dispatches, he sealed his pri- 
vate letters, — as one a year later to this much loved 
brother Charles, — w4th the Le Moyne star, rose and 
crescent. Mobile has her own seal, showing ship 
and cotton bale, "Agriculture and Commerce;" but 
may be even in our day Bienville's motto of "Labor 
and Concord" would not be wholly amiss. 

v.— RELIGION. 

The ancients, from Babj'lon to Rome, founded no 
colony without sacrifices to the deity, and in modern 
times one of the objects alleged for colonization was 
the spread of Christianity. The French were no 
exception. The priest voyaged ahead even of the 
voyageur. When i:he Le Moynes came to the Gulf 
missionaries from the Seminary of Quebec 
Avere found among the Indians of the Mississippi. 
DeSoto's Dominican friars were paralleled by^ the 
Jesuit Douge and his colleagues under Iberville. 
One of the earliest and best loved of the Seminary 
priests was Davion, who sometimes left his lonely 
Mississippi vigil (Avhere the Americans Avere after- 
Avards to build Fort Adams) to mingle Avith his gen- 
ial countrymen at Biloxi and Mobile. 

The first entry in the A^enerable church registers 
of this post is by Davion, noting that he had baptized 
a little Indian boy, an Apalache, on September 6, 
1704. Douge seems not to have obeyed the royal 
ordinance of 1667 as to keeping a baptismal register^ 
— possibly he needed none ; for, as far as is known, 
the first child was baptized October 4, 1704. 

If there had been any doubt, it was finally settled 
that Louisiana Avas Avithin the spiritual jurisdiction 

21 



of the Bishop of Quebec, at that time the celebrated 
St. Vallier, and in July, 1704, he constituted Fort 
Louis a separate parish. It was without a regular 
pastor until September 28, 1704, when it fell to 
Davion's lot to induct La Vente with ceremonies 
recorded on a piece of paper made the first page of 
the register. We read : 

''I, the undersigned priest and missionary apos- 
tolic, declare to all whom it may concern, that, the 
28th of September in the year of Salvation 1704, in 
virtue of letters of provision and collation granted 
and sealed July 20 of last year, by which Monseig- 
neur, the most illustrious and reverend Bishop of 
Quebec, erects a parochial church in the place called 
Fort Louis of Louisiane, and of which he gives the 
cure and care to M. Henri Roulleaux De la Vente, 
missionary apostolic of the diocese of Bayeux, J have 
placed the said priest in actual and corporal posses- 
sion of the said parochial church and of all the 
rights belonging toj it, after having observed the 
usual and requisite ceremonies, to-wit. by entrance 
into the church, sprinkling of holy water, kissing 
the high altar, touching the mass book, visiting the 
most sacred sacrament of the altar, and ringing the 
bills, which possession I certify that no one has op- 
posed. 

"Given in the church of Fort Louis the day of 
month and year above, in the presence of Jean Bap- 
tist e de Bienville, lieutenant of the king and com- 
mandant at the said fort, Pierre du Q. de Boisbriant, 
major, Nicolas de la Salle, clerk and performing 
function of commissaire of the marine. 

La Vente soon ran counter to Bienville and their 
unedifying quarrels lasted until La Vente returned 

"^22 



to France 1710 in a dying condition. His successor 
was Le Maire, who was friendly with the governor. 
He came as a representative of the good Gervaise, 
whose means built the first church and parsonage. 

The church records are invaluable as giving 
names, occupations and sidelights on the colony. 
The test of religion, however, is the inspiration it 
affords for good living, and in Louisiana re- 
ligious influences were largely neutralized by the 
roving life of many of the colonists and the whiskey 
trade among the Indians. However, Mobile was no 
worse than the average pioneer settlement. 

Louis XIY had banished the Protestants from 
France and would not even permit them to settle in 
Louisiana. His minister announced that the king 
had not chased the Huguenots out of France to let 
them found a republic in America. Difference in re- 
ligion was to have no little to do with the enmity 
between the British and the French colonies, and, 
so far as religion was concerned, they were to grow 
up independently and afford an instructive contrast. 
There was little difference, however, in the woods. 
The British woodrariger was not more moral and 
not less artful than the French coureur de bois. 
Whatever might be the merits of a religion which 
approached God through the old church and im- 
posing forms as contrasted with a faith which dis- 
carded forms and sought in Macaulay's words ''to 
gaze full upon the intolerable brightness of the 
deity," it was not to appear when they came in con- 
tact with the natives. But on the other hand in 
self-denial the Jesuits of the Northwest were to be 
equalled by the fewer missionaries sent out from 
New England. 

23 



"We generally think of the Jesuits as the pioneer 
Catholics of America, but, although they came down 
the Mississippi, the Bishop of Quebec soon substi- 
tuted the missionaries of his own Seminary, and the 
Jesuits were not active in the South. This seems 
strange when we remember how influential they 
were w^ith Louis XIV. They were really the keepers 
of his conscience, but the Duke of Orleans w^as of a 
different mould. In the time of Law's Company the 
Mobile district was given over to the Carmelites, 
but in point of fact few of this small order ever came 
to America, and Jesuits are found on the headwaters 
of the Tombigbee and the Alabama. 

At Mobile there was a separate cure for the Apa- 
laches as well as for Dauphine Island, and with per- 
haps better judgment the priests did not follow the 
plan of the Spanish padres. They civilized rather 
than domesticated the Indians. 

On the whole the church did its duty by Louisiana, 
whether we look at the natives or at the colonists. 

VI.— THE SOCIAL SIDE. 

In early Mobile the houses were built close to- 
gether, partly as a reminder of the Availed towns in 
France, and partly because of the sociable nature of 
the people. They would talk from window to win- 
dow, and often across the narrow streets, while the 
little front gallery was in some sense what Dr. 
Brinton would call the basis of social relations. 
"Woman was here, as elsewhere, the centre of all 
social life, and Avoman has among the French always 
occupied an influential place. The two social foci 
were Woman and the Church. The age of the ency- 

24 



clopedists had not quite come, and the French colon- 
ists were devout Catholics. 

If we stop to think of it, marriage, birth, sickness 
and death directly or indirectly make up a large 
part of all human life. The holy days, too — Christ- 
mas, Easter and different Saint's Days — were ob- 
served and tended to bring families and friends' to- 
gether. One of the favorite holidays was St. Louis 
Day, July 24, and it is odd that this should conform 
so closely to the two great modern holidays — Bastille 
Day and the American Fourth of July. Merry 
Mardi Gras also can be found observed from the 
times of Old Fort Louis at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff. 

Among the French the bride brought a dowry, 
which remained her own, but in Louisiana there was 
such a scarcity of women that dowry is not often 
mentioned. The king undertook to supply the colon- 
ists with wives, and among the oddest cargoes ever 
shipped were those every few years of marriageable 
girls. There was a famous consignment of twenty- 
three by the Pelican in 1704, and the first after the 
removal was probably that of 1712. The Pelican 
girls have been remembered for their revolt against 
cornbread, which was new to them, but they should 
be remembered as the women whose husbands and 
children founded Mobile. That their names may be 
honored, they are given : Francoise Marie Anne de 
Boisrenaud, Jeanne Catherine de Bei'anhard, Jeanne 
Elizabeth Le Pinteux. Marie Noel de Mesnil, 
Gabrielle Savarit, Genevieve Burel, Marguerite 
Burel, Marie Therese Brochon, Angelique Broupn, 
Marie Briard; Marguerite iTavernier. Elizabeth 
Deshays, Catherine Christophle, Marie Philippe, 
Louise Marguerite Housseau, Marie Magdeleine 

25 



Duanet, Marie Dufresne, Marguerite Guichard, 
Renee Gilbert, Louise Francoise Lefevre, Gabrielle 
Bonet, Marie Jeanne Marbe and Catherine Tour- 
nant, although the *'N. P. P." after her name 
seems to indicate that she did not come. Maybe that 
is the origin of the tradition that one did not 
marry. It is pleasant to know that whatever was 
the case after John Law undertook to boom Louisi- 
ana, the women brought while Mobile was the capi- 
tal were uniformly of good character and founded 
honored families. There was no Manon L'Escaut 
among them, of dubious if romantic story, and the 
best people could look back with pride to their Mo- 
bile origin. The social morality of that day was 
high, for the Regency had not yet come, and the 
Court of Louis XIV had become sedate under 
Madame de Maintenon. 

Education has assumed a much larger place with 
us than with these simple colonists, but it would be a 
mistake to think that there were no schools. Louis 
had subjected the church to the state, but within its 
limits the church exercised full jurisdiction not only 
over religion, but over education, — indeed education 
was a part of the duty of the priest or nun. The 
teaching Jesuits were not the official priests of Mo- 
bile, for these were missionaries of the Seminary of 
Quebec. Later came the Carmelites ; but no mat- 
ter who they were, the priests as a rule were men of 
culture and earnestness. We learn nothing of the 
books they read, or of the school books of the chil- 
dren. Not only was the printing press unknown, but 
literature did not form the staple of family enter- 
tainment. Nevertheless the church records show 
that very many people could write, although later 

26 



the cross was often the method of signature. One of 
Cadillac's daughters made a cross and she was fresh 
from the schools of Canada. 

Cadillac was to bring with him quite a number of 
French ''domestiques," but the usual servants of 
that day were little Indian slaves captured in war. 
There were not many negroes when Mobile was 
founded, — ther^ were several at the Old Fort and 
only twenty in 1713. They began to be imported in 
numbers under John Law's Company. The slaves, 
Indian or African, w^ere always baptized. 

The original settlers were called habitans, as in 
Canada, but the second generation assumed the 
name of Creole. The word' comes from the West 
Indies and mean indigenous. It is sometimes ap- 
plied to animals and fruits as well as to people. It 
came to mean people of French or Spanish extrac- 
tion who were born in Louisiana, old or new. 

The first Creole was Francois Le Camp, born in 
old Mobile in 1704. Father Le Camp was a lock- 
smith, a habitant from France or Canada. The lit- 
tle boy, however, being a native, was a Creole, the 
"First Creole," as he was affectionately called. This 
seems to have become a kind of title held successive- 
ly by people afterwards. 

It meant primarily persons of the purest white 
blood, and its use as applied to mulattoes is incorrect, 
except in the sense that they, too, might be partly 
Latin in origin. Of Creoles in this sense of mixed 
blood we may have an instance in the modern Cajans: 
near Mount Vernon. These are sometimes said to 
be descended from the gentle Acadians immortalized 
in Evangeline ; but gentleness can hardly be said to 
be a Cajan trait. More certainty attaches to the 

27 



Chastangs of Chastang Station, who are said to have 
the blood of Dr. Jean Chastang. While he was in 
Mobile the doctor lived on Spira & Pineus' corner, 
but he afterwards moved to the bluff named for him. 
The Chastang patois is French, but much corrupted 
by African and English. The settlement is a very 
interesting one. 

The habitans lived a contented rather than a 
strenuous life. Amusement then as now was one of 
the French arts, and music and dancing were com- 
mon. We read of Picard taking his 'Wiolon" with 
him when Bienville dispersed the people among the 
Indians to avoid starvation, and Picard taught the 
dark Nassitoche girls on Lake Pontchartrain the 
minuet and other dances familiar among the French 
at Mobile. Penicaut's best girl, by the way, was a 
Nassitoche. Of course wine was used, but the evil 
side of liquor seems to have been largely confined to 
its sale to the Indians. The coureurs de bois were 
intemperate in every way, but the habitans learned 
to live a plain and healthy life. 

VIL— A COLONIAL BILL OF FARE. 

It was the time of Louis XIV, soon to be followed 
by the Eegency, when extravagance in dress and at 
table was the order of the day. Of course. Mobile 
was 71 ot Versailles, but a Frenchman knows no home 
but France, and at first brought everything from 
France. Among the greatest distresses of the colon- 
ists was the infrequency of ships from home. This 
caused the absence of not only of Parisian fashions, 
but at first of French fare as well. So far as food 
was concerned this lack was limited mainly to flour, 
lard, wine and salted meat, for fresh meat and fruit, 

28 



of course was not brought across the water. There 
were French cooks in Mobile, however, and they 
gradually learned to dress the native products into 
appetizing dishes. 

Only a little later than the founding of Mobile, 
the Spanish officers at St. Marks gave the Jesuit 
Clarlevoix a state dinner which made him think he 
was in Europe, and Penicaut even earlier tells of 
things which make one's mouth Avater. 

The French breakfast has always been light, and 
the main meal has been dinner. While we cannot be 
certain of the order in which the menu was served, 
we know the name of a good many Mobile dishes. 
We may conjecture that soup, — the great national 
dish, — came first. It was so essential that it became 
the proverbial expression for a meal. Bienville, for 
instance, speaks of the priest, Le Maire, taking soup 
with him. Gumbo file goes back to colonial times, 
and indeed earlier, for it was ground up sassafras 
leaves as originally prepared by the Indians, while 
the oysters that go w4th it were so abundant as to 
give this name to what we call Cedar Point. Few 
kinds of fish are mentioned by the French, but they 
had the same sheephead, mackerel, trout and the 
like which are favorites with us. A stream over the 
bay was named Fish River. Meat was even more 
abundant. Bear and deer were familiar dishes, and 
much later a quarter of venison cost very little. 
Deer River, below Mobile, and Bear Ground, near 
the Old Fort, testify to the abundance of such game. 
Chickens, eggs and turkeys abound, — the latter be- 
ing called Indian fowl, Coq d'Inde, and giving the 
name to our Coden. In fact, game of every kind 
was common. A great dish borrowed from the In- 

29 



dians was the sagamite, a kind of mush made from 
corn m.eal, and bread made of acorns or other nuts 
was not unknown. Vegetables became common^ 
especially corn and beans, prepared separately or 
served together as the Indian succotash. Hominy 
is' mentioned oftener on the Virginia border than in 
Louisiana, but corn bread of different kinds was 
used. Something fried (friture) was often a part of 
the meal, and pastry (patisserie) was seldom absent 
in well-to-do households. 

Fruits were abundant. The peach, cherry and 
plum were native, and enjoyed by the Indians as 
well as the French. Oranges were introduced from 
the, West Indies and the fig from Provence, but 
bananas are not named. Grapes were not much es- 
teemed, as there was little besides the muscadine, 
which we know. The scuppernong does not seem 
to have been then introduced from the Atlantic 
coast. Strawberries, however, were much praised, 
and also watermelons, while mulberries were univer- 
sal. These are summer fruits, but in the fall the 
nuts of this climate were gathered. Walnuts, chest- 
nuts and chinquapins were frequent enough and 
much enjoyed. Pecans (pacanes) are mentioned as 
a common species of walnut (noyer). 

Little native wine was made, although there is rea- 
son to think that some whiskey was ; one of the 
greatest drawbacks connected with the infrequency 
of communication was the scarcity of wine. Peni- 
caut did not much esteem the native cherries, but 
casually remarks that they go well with eau-de-vie» 
This corresponds to the brandied fruit of American 
times. 

We generally wind up a dinner, as well as begin 

80 



a breakfast, with coffee. This drink was coming 
into use in France. D'Argenson mentions it- as a 
common custom, — and somewhat later it is known 
in Louisiana, — but we cannot be certain that it was 
used at the time that Mobile was founded. 

Of course, the rich lived better than the poor, but 
there were not many poor. All cultivated the soil, 
and raised something. The freshness and quality 
of the vegetables, and the fact that so many people 
were hunters and fishers, made conditions more 
equal than in later days. Creole cooking became 
one of the colonial institutions. Creole dishes, often 
highly seasoned, become common. After the removal 
of Mobile it was to make little difference whether 
vessels came or not. But at its founding this was 
not so : for Mobile was a part of France and had no 
other aspiration than to be asi- far-away suburb of 
Paris. 

VIII.— THE MOSQUITO FLEET. 

It was only once or twice a season that the big 
ships came from France, but Mobile Bay saw other 
sails during the year. The coasts of France, wheth- 
er on the Mediterranean, Atlantic or the Norman, 
developed a hardy sea-faring population, and not a 
few of these, as w^ell as many Canadians, made up 
the early settlers. Dauphine Island, — Massacree as 
it was first called,— was well settled from the be- 
ginning, and gradually the shores of the bay re- 
ceived many settlers. These habitans and Creoles 
loved the water and there is hardly a cliff on the 
bay or a fishing stream reaching back into the in- 
terior that does not show evidence, in name or other- 
wise, of their occupation. People now-a-daays seek- 
ing locations in Mobile and Baldwin counties are 

31 



confronted by French names which many of them 
Jo not understand. 

At first glance it would seem that the principal 
commerce would be the lonely trip of the traversier 
from the Island to the city, — carrying supplies from 
the incoming ships and exports for them to take 
back to France, besides some local traffic and ex- 
change of goods. This was frequent enough, and 
even in 1702 a boat of sixty tons had to be built for 
this purpose, and still the commerce grew as port 
and town improved. But this was not all. During 
the war against England the Spanish ports were 
open and there was a large trade of every kind with 
Pensacola, besides traffic, only less in size, with Ha- 
vana and Vera Cruz. In addition to this, moreover, 
there was always the export of goods from Mobile 
to the French island^, particularly to Leogane and 
other parts of San Domingo. Indeed, we miss much 
of the spirit of the time if we think of Mobile alone ; 
for even Louisiana was only a part of a large French 
colonial empire, which in some respects had its 
earliest centre in San Domingo. 

Nor is this coasting trade all that would build up 
shipping. The habitans were not only Frenchmen, 
but Catholics, and Catholicism incidentally meant a 
large fishing trade for Fridays and fast days. The 
people early began to raise cattle, bat their prox- 
imity to the coast ever made fish one of the favorite 
articles of food. The fishermen lived principally 
near the mouth of the Bay, as indeed they have ever 
since, and, while the Bay of Bon Secours may have 
been a reminder of the Montreal church, it was also 
truly a haven of refuge for small craft. Perhaps 
the village above Daphne was later, but there grad- 

32 
J 



Lially came to be groups of dwellings on favored 
spots about the smiling bay. 

Each civilization has to borrow much from that 
which went before, and we find reminders of Europe 
even in far away Louisiana. The French got much 
of their nautical speech from the Italians and Span- 
iards, — as these had earlier from the Romans and 
Moors, — and some of the boats which plied our bay 
are described in terms which would just as well fit 
the Mediterranean. 

There are a number of small tj^pes of vessels men- 
tioned, whose size is somewhat uncertain. We have 
seen that a traversier running between Mobile and 
Dauphine Tsland ; but a traversier of forty tons also 
sometimes went to Havana, and two even came with 
Iberville across the ocean in 1698. The chaloupe, — 
a variation of the Dutch sloop, — was also seaworthy, 
for one hailed from St. Augustine. Other kinds of 
boats are biscaienne, balandre, and pinque, all sail- 
ing craft with some difference in size and character. 
AVe know one balandre came from Vera Cruz, and a 
pinque could carry six hundred sacks of flour. 
Felouque is sometimes used interchangeably with 
frigate, as in the case of L'Aigle. By rights the 
felouque is the long, two-masted fast sailer with two 
Lateen sails still so common on the Mediterranean. 
Brulot and flute, — La Dauphine is a flute, — seem to 
have been generic words, while the pirogue was 
rather a flat bottom boat than the dug-out, which, 
among the Americans, came to bear that title. 
Canoes are often mentioned, and generally as made 
of bark ; butwhat kind of bark was available in our 
latitude? Oak and pine were the principal trees, 
and their bark was certainly not used. Birch and 

33 



willow generally served in the north, but were un- 
common about Mobile. Doubtless some of these 
barks were secured from the upper rivers, but this 
was the reason that the dug-out w^as common even 
in Indian days. In point of fact it was hollowed by 
fire rather than by chiselling. 

Iberville planned a great ship-yard on Dauphine 
Island, — he said there was no reason why boats of 
any size desired could not be built there. His death 
and the Spanish Succession War made great 
changes, — but maybe our day is to effect what he 
dreamed. 

The boats were very useful w^here everyone lived 
on the w^ater, and there were no roads beyond trad- 
ing paths. Proportionally navigation w^as more im- 
portant than now, for all trade and commerce w^ere 
carried on by water. ' And apart from communica- 
tion among the French on Mobile waters, the Indian 
trade up the rivers and commerce to France, we 
read much of trips to Pensacola and Vera Cruz. 
Starvation, — disette, — was a frequent visitor, es- 
pecially at the old fort, and but for the coasting 
trade to the Spanish colonies, our French settlement 
might now share the fate of Ealeigh's colony at 
Roanoke. 

All honor, then, not only to Iberville and the 
armed Renommee but also to Chateaugue and Be- 
cancourt with their peaceful felouqaes and brigan- 
tines. 



34 



II. 

MOBILE. 



IX.— THE REMOVAL AS TOLD BY THE 
REMOVERS. 

Mobile had been established with two outlooks, — 
the one towards the Indian tribes high up the river 
system, the other tow^ards France and trade in the 
Gulf of ]\Iexico. The latter w^as necessarily con- 
ducted from Port Dauphin at the east end of Dau- 
phine Island, for there w^as the deep harbor. The 
other called for a river site, as the pirogues and 
other boats of the day could not venture on the 
rough bay. It might be a question whether Iberville 
had not selected a point too high up for his main 
settlement. There was no question of its conven- 
ience so far as the Indians were concerned, particu- 
larly the few but influential Mobilians. but just as' 
the French had -to experiment for several years to 
find what grain was suited to the country, so they 
were to learn by experience as to the best site for 
their capital. 

High water had already threatened Fort Louis, 
but in March, 1711, came the floods which settled 
the question for all time. This, together with the 
surrounding circumstances, is told so fully in two 
dispatches dater shortly afterwards, on June 20, 
1711, that we will give them as in the nature of what 
Prof. A. B. Hart would call history told by contem- 
poraries. One was from Bienville himself at Mas- 

85 



sacre Island to Pontchartrain, the minister of the 
marine, and is as follows, after discussing his Span- 
ish neighbors : 

"AVe have arrived at that period when we could 
not bear our own misery. It is so great that I dare 
not describe it to your highness. We are not able to 
sustain ourselves any longer against the flood of 
presents which the British make to the Indians and 
which they offer them for abandoning our side, and 
if we have sustained ourselves up to the present, I 
protest that it is not w^ithout much management and 
care. It is two years since w^e have given the In- 
dians anything, and during that time we have kept 
them hoping from month to month. I have no am- 
munition, — I dare not tell you further of our condi- 
tion ; I am seeking some from Martinique, but they 
will do as they have done, that is to «ay, pay no at- 
tention to our representation. As the opportunity 
of this boat is not sure on account of the latitude 
where it must go, we are trying to see if we can find 
a suitable boat here to send direct to France to ren- 
der account of all I cannot put on paper. 

' ^ The waters have risen so greatly this spring that 
the habitans of this town (bourg) have asked me to 
change the location and put it at the entrance of the 
river, eight leagues lower, where there is a splendid 
place (bel endroit), and this I have accorded them. 
They are all building there at present (il y batisse 
tous a presant). This fort is all rotten, so that it 
will not cost more to build another one at the mouth 
of the river, where we will be in position to aid Mas- 
sacre Island. I Avill cause a village of Indians to de- 
scend to the site which we are abandoning. I will 
also make the more laborious and expert of these 

86 



natives come down to the new establishment. I have 
already commenced to have work done and to have 
made cedar piling (pieux de sedre) for the enclosure 
(encinte) of this new fort. If I had any goods suit- 
able for pay to the Indians I could have the new fort 
built cheap, but having none, I will do nothing that I 
do not knoAV how to pa}^ for." 

The other dispatch possibly carried more weight; 
for it was written by D'Artaguiette, who had been 
sent over to investigate colonial conditions. He also 
addresses Monseigneur Pontchartrain, and writes as 
follows : 

''The waters rose so considerably this spring and 
with so much impetuosity that the greater part of 
the houses of this town (bourg) have been covered 
(noyez) up to the comb (fet) of the roof in five or 
six days. This lasted more than a month ; the in- 
habitants have all asked to change down the river, 
which one could not refuse them ; the fort is all rot- 
ten. ^I. de Bienville, who sees like myself, the im- 
possibility of aiding the port (Dauphine Island) 
from so far, and that four years ago the same acci- 
dent happened, joined to the assurance which all 
the Indians give us that the waters rise even higher, 
all these reasons have made us take tho resolution of 
changing; the commandant has had people working 
with much diligence in making cedar piling (pieux 
de cedre), which lasts much longer than other wood, 
for the enclosure (enceinte) of the fort and its bas- 
tions. This wood is found in places difficult of ac- 
cess, but its hardness makes the trouble worth while. 
The Apalache Indians, who have been working on 
this piling, are looking after their crops, and it is 
not possible for, them to work further until after 

37 



their harvest. Meantime they ask to be paid, and 
tiiere is nothing to pay them with. We are so de- 
prived of everything that dying of misery would not 
be worse. We have asked aid of San Domingo, 
Martinique and everywhere, without anyone's deign- 
ing to give attention to our complaints. They have 
written us from Vera Cruz that an armanent is be- 
ing made up at Jamaica (British) to come here and 
capture us, and that the Renommee (French) des- 
tined for here has been captured. Finally, I cannot 
tell you our present condition, it is beyond expres- 
sion; one cannot change the fort and the garrison 
until the arrival of the help which yoli will send 
this colony. It will be necessary to send an engineer 
to construct this fort and to build one little battery 
or several batteries at the Port of Massacre, with a 
detachment of marines to guard it. This place since 
its fire has been rebuilt by the energy of the inhabi- 
tants, who like to live there much better than they 
did before, so that they do not deserve to be exposed 
to the insult of foreign vessels." 

We have also an account by Penicaut, who was 
one of the habitans. We thus have the removal from 
the public and the private point of view, together 
with an account of the new^ neighborhood. 

"At the beginning of this year," says he, "the 
fort of Mobile and the establishment of the habitans 
in the neighborhood of the fort were inundated by 
an overflow of the river to such an extent that only 
the high elevatins were not damaged. 

"MM. D'Artaguiette and Bienville, seeing that, 
according to the report of the Indians, we should be 
often exposed to these inundations, resolved to 
change the fort of Mobile. They chose a place where 

38 



we had put the Chactas upon a bend of Mobile bay, 
to the right. AVe gave them whom we displaced 
another site for their homes two leagues further 
down, to our right in descending to the sea, on the 
bank of Dog River. 

'*M. Paillou, aide-major, went with our officers to 
the place where we had planned to build the new 
fort. He laid out the outside lines', then the es- 
planade, which ought to be left vacant around the 
fort, and marked also further out the location for 
each family, giving each one a lot twelve toises wide 
by twenty-five long. He marked out at the same 
time place for the barracks for the soldiers ; the resi- 
dence of the priests was to the left of the fort, facing 
the sea. We worked the whole year on this estab- 
lishment. 

''This year a party of fifteen Chactas, while on a 
bear hunt, was met in the woods by a party of Ali- 
bamons, their enemies. The chief of the Chactas, 
named Dos Grille, a brave man^ was not dismayed 
by the number of the Alibamons, and, although hit 
by a gunshot from afar, and the ball had pierced 
his cheek, he took out the bullet, which had staid in 
his mouth, put it in his gun, and killed the man who 
had wounded him. He immediately reassembled his 
fifteen men on an elevated spot, and from there, 
each one being posted behind a tree, they killed 
more than thirty Alibamons. The Alibamons did 
not dare resist any longer, and took to flight, aban- 
doning their dead and wounded. 

"The Chactas had only three men killed and three 
or four slightly wounded. They brought to our fort 
to MM. D'Artaguiette and Bienville the thirty scalps 
and the skins of two deers which they had killed 

39 



while coming. We made them presents of merchan- 
dise and gave them considerable powder and ball in 
recognition of their bravery. The chief of these 
Chactas had killed eight himself, though wounded, 
as I have said, by a ball in his mouth. 

''Several habitans of Mobile this year went and 
established themselves on the seashore at the place 
called Miragouin, about five leagues from Mobile 
going towards Dauphine Island, one league beyond 
Fowl River. 

* ' The rest of the year was spent in completing the 
new fort which we built on the seashore ; we erected 
two batteries outside, each of twelve guns, which 
commanded the sea. 

''The new fort of Mobile on the seashore being 
completed and the houses finished, we transported 
all household goods and merchandise in canoes, and 
made rafts upon w4iich we put cannon and in gen- 
eral all munitions and effects which had been at the 
old fort. The habitans carried their effects at the 
same time to the respective habitations which had 
been given them near the new fort and we entirely 
abandoned the old. 

"Some days after we had been established at the 
new place on the seashore there arrived a vessel 
which anchored in the roads of Dauphine Island ; it 
was the frigate named the Renommee, commanded 
by M. de Remonville, who was captain. 

' ' The sieur de Valigny, an officer who since a boy 
had been fort major, came in this vessel with twenty- 
five Frenchmen, whom he had brought over to rein- 
force the garrison. 

*'We disembarked the munitions of war and sup- 
plies and put them in the magazines of the fort on 

40 



"Dauphine Island with troops to guard them." 

Their old acquaintance, disette, — famine, — follow- 
ed the French and they had to seek adventures 
among the Indians as they had at the old fort. In 
this way they learned to know the new neighbor- 
hood. 

''M. Blondel, lieutenant of infantry, went with 30 
soldiers to live among the Chactas'. Sieur de la 
Valigny went with twenty-five soldiers across Mo- 
bile Bay to the neighborhood of Fish River. He 
took with him eight Apalache Indians w^ho were ex- 
cellent hunters. These Apalaches, whose village 
had been destroyed by the Alibamons, had come, as I 
have told, and been established between the Mo- 
bilians and the Tomes in a place which M. Bienville 
had given them, with grain to plant their lands the 
first year; but the year that we quit the site of the 
first fort of Mobile they followed us and MM. 
D 'Artaguiette and Bienville assigned them a district 
on the banks of the river St. Martin (Three Mile 
Creek) a league above us, counting from the bay. 
The Taouachas were also placed on the river so as to 
be a league above the Apalaches. They, too, had 
left the Spaniards because of war with the Ali- 
bamons ; they are not Christians like the Apalaches, 
who are the single Christian nation which came 
from Spanish territory. 

'*The Apalaches have divine service like the Cath- 
olics in France. Their great feast is the Day of St. 
Louis ; they come in the evening before to invite the 
officers of the fort to the feast at their village, and 
on that day they give good cheer to all who come, 
and especially the French. 

''The priests of our fort go there to say high mass, 

41 



which the Indians hear with a great deal of devo- 
tion, chanting the Psalms in Latin as we do in 
France, and after dinner the vespers and the bene- 
diction of the Holy Sacrament. Both men and wo- 
men are on this day well dressed. The men have a 
kind of cloth overcoat (surtout) and the women 
wear cloaks (manteaux) with petticoats (jupes) of 
silk a la Francoise; but they have no headdress 
(coeffure), the head being bare ; their hair, long and 
very black, is plaited and hangs down in one or two 
plaits, like the Spanish women. Those who have 
hair too long plait it down to the middle of the back 
and then tie it up with ribbon. 

''They have a church, where one of the French 
priests goes to say mass every Sunday and feast day ; 
and also a baptismal font to baptize their children, 
and cemetery (cimetiere) alongside the church, in 
which there is a cross ; there they bury their dead. 

''On St. Louis Day, after service is finished, to- 
wards evening they mask, men, women and children ; 
they dance the rest of the day with the French who 
happen to be there and other Indians who come that 
day to the village ; they have any quantity of cooked 
meat at refresh them. They love the French very 
much, and it must be confessed that there is nothing 
savage about them except their language, which is a 
mixture of Spanish and Alibamon." 

The centre of the Mobile settlement was the new 
fort. This was built of palisades very close to the 
edge of the water, and in fact it must have needed 
some filling to reclaim the front part of it from the 
marshy bank. It was apparently begun some day in 
May, on the site now marked by a commeromative 
tablet. Like Rome, Mobile was not built in a day. 

42 



We know from the later dispatch from Bienville 
that even in October of this year there were still a 
few houses occupied at Old Fort Louis. But official 
life centred at New Fort Louis and the old site was 
forgotten in the life and activity of the new. 

The port on Dauphine Island remained unchanged 
except that it became more popular. Penicaut says' 
this occurred at the same time New Fort Louis was 
built. 

"During this time," says he, "M. Lavigne-Voisin, 
a captain from Saint Malo, made land at Dauphine 
Island, where he anchored, and thereupon went to 
Mobile to see MM. D.Artaguiette and Bienville, and, 
after having stayed there several days, he asked 
permission to build a fort on Dauphine Island, which 
pleased them very much. He did not fail to com- 
mence work as soon as he got back; he made em- 
brasures in his fort for cannon, which protected the 
entrance of the port for all vessels which come to 
land there. 

"He at the same time had built a very handsome 
church in the district where the habitans of the 
island lived. The front of the church faced the 
port where the vessels were, so that those who were 
on board could come in a moment to hear mass, 
which caused many habitans of the environs of Mo- 
bile to establish themselves upon Dauphine Island." 
And this, he adds, was even more marked after 
Remonville's arrival in the fall, and soon the port 
became a little town itself. 



43 



X.— NEW MOBILE. 

Bienville selected for the new site of his colony a 
plateau near the mouth of the river. A slight slope 
back from the river reached a wide level space ten 
feet above ordinary water on which a large city 
could be built. The river bank was marshy, but it 
was only about a hundred yards wide. To the south 
was Choctaw Point swamp, to the north the low 
ground of the mouth of the bayou he called Mar- 
motte (and Americans One Mile Creek), but it 
would be a long time before the town could extend 
so far. The long, low bluff overlooking the river 
afforded a good place for a front street, and a cape 
or projection where the river made a bend to the 
west presented an admirable place for a fort to com- 
mand the approach from the sea in the one direction 
and from the Indian country in the other. On the 
location he selected grew up the city of Mobile, to 
flourish and grow under five flags. 

The boundaries of Bienville's Mobile were approx- 
imately St. Michael street on the north, Conception 
street on the west, and Canal street on the south. 
The eastern street was Koyal, running along the 
high land. The slope to the east was often muddy 
and overflowed and no houses were built on the east 
side of Royal, except that the fort extended almost 
to the river. West of the fort, too, there were two 
blocks running out to Joachim street, and bounded 
on three sides by the woods. The principal street 
was Royal. 

The plat .' gives a detailed description of the fort 
itself as follows : 

44 



"Fort Louis is fortified with an exterior length 
from one point of bastion to another of 540 feet. 

''The fort is constructed of cedar pilings 13 feet 
high, of which 2 1-2 are in the ground, and 14 inches 
square planted close together. These stakes end on 
top in points like palisades. On the inside along the 
piling runs a kind of banquette in good slope, two 
feet high and one and a half wide. 

''There is in the fort only the governor's house, 
the magasin where are the king's effects, and a 
guard-house. The officers, soldiers, and habitans 
have their abode outside the fort, being placed in 
such manner that the streets are six toises wide and 
parallel. The blocks are 300 feet square, except 
those opposite the fort. 

"The houses are constructed of cedar and pine 
upon a foundation of wooden stakes which project 
out of the ground a foot, because this soil is inun- 
dated in certain localities in time of rain. Some 
people use to support their houses a kind of turf 
(tufle), very soft, and would be admirable for fine 
buildings. This stone is fouud 18 leagues above the 
new settlement along the bank of the Mobile River. 
The houses are 18, 20 to 25 feet high or more, some 
lower, constructed of a kind of plaster (mortie) 
made of earth and lime. This lime is made of oyster 
shell found at the mouth of the river on little islands 
which are called Shell Islands. 

"They give every one who wishes to settle in this 
place a lot 75 feet front on a street by 150 feet deep. 

"The stone to support the houses is scarce and not 
much used for lack of means of water transporta- 
tion, such as flatboats, for there are none, and peo- 
ple do not care to go to the expense of building 

45 



them. This stone would be a great aid, for those 
whose houses rest only on wooden piles are obliged 
to renew them every three or four years, because 
they decay in the ground. ' ' 

We have ''the names of officers and principal 
habitans who occupy the lots (emplacements) of this 
new colony (establisement)." Proceeding north- 
northward on present Royal street from the fort the 
block up to the present Conti we find occupied by 
only two places. There is some confusion as to the 
southern one, but there can be little doubt that this 
was the site of the parish church (Leglize et 
paroisse), for the other place, that on the corner of 
Conti, was occupied by the priests of the Seminary 
of Quebec, — who had a large lot called the Seminaire 
at Old Mobile. From Conti to Dauphin were only 
two people of note, on the southern corner being M. 
de Chateaugue, the great sailor brother of Bienville, 
and next north of him. Sieur Poirrier, the commis- 
sary (garde magasin). The magasin itself was, as 
shown in the description, within the fort, on its 
western side. The lots facing on Royal were gener- 
ally four to a block, and the other two of this square, 
now Van Antwerp's, as well as almost all of the two 
blocks to the north, were occupied by habitans and 
voyageurs. Between Dauphin and St. Francis, how- 
ever, were even in those days lots occupied by peo- 
ple in the employ of the government, — somewhat as 
now, for this was the site of the Custom House ; and 
next north of the present Glennon building was M. 
de St. Helesne. 

The land behind these Royal street lots were occu- 
pied mainly by soldiers, but also in two instances by 
''several women." Across the present St. Emanuel 

4f) 



street from them were mainly soldiers, employees 
and habitans, except that at the northwest corner of 
St. Emanuel and Government streets was M. Des 
Laurier, who occupied the important position of 
surgeon (chirurgien major), and at the southwest 
corner of St. Emanuel and St. Francis, and thus in 
the present Bienville Square, was the well known 
soldier, M. Blondel. Most of the lots on Conception 
street are unmarked, except that the present square 
was occupied by soldiers, habitans and employees, 
and that Gayfer's and the Goodman stores next east 
were taken up by the grounds of the hospital. 

No one lived further west, except that there are 
two blocks set off for soldiers on the west side of 
Conception from Government to Monroe streets. 
East of these and immediately west of the fort were 
two blocks which were occupied. The cemetery 
lay at the southeast corner of Conception and Gov- 
ernment streets, taking up the site of the Fidelia 
Club and adjacent property. On the St. Emanuel 
etreet front of these two blocks, and facing the trees 
of the fort esplanade, were some well known people. 
Thus about the Acker place was M. de Boisbrillant, 
a distinguished officer whose romantic affair with a 
gray nun Bienville interrupted. Next south of him 
was M. de Grandville, and next on the corner of 
Church street, on the site of Christ Church, was M. 
Valligny, a prominent soldier. On the southwest 
corner of St. Emanuel and Church streets was M. de 
St. Denis, one of the most distinguished explorers of 
old Louisiana. His name and Bienville's are the 
only names also found on the map of Old Mobile. 
He did not live at Mobile very long, for he soon 
made his headquarters at what is now Ocean Springs, 

47 



but he came back to Mobile every now and then. 
Next south of him was Jean Louis, master cannoneer 
(maitre cainonier), and then after some unnamed 
habitant we find on a corner near modern Theatre 
street M. Du Clos, the ordonnateur^ corresponding 
almost to the position of civil governor. 

South of the fort four blocks are laid out from our 
Monroe to Canal, but they contain very few people. 
Most of them are filled by soldiers, habitans, em- 
ployees and "plusieurs femmes" again, but there 
are two or three notable exceptions. The front 
square immediately south of the fort, somewhat as 
at Old Mobile, belonged to Bienville, for he had a 
whole block to himself. At the southwest corner of 
Madison and Royal was the residence (logement) of 
the priests, probably Jesuits. These were entirely 
independent of the Seminary of Quebec, and not al- 
ways friendly with it. Immediately west of the 
priests, and thus on the south side of Madison mid- 
way between Royal and St. Emanuel, was M. Mande- 
ville, the first of a name always distinguished in 
Louisiana. The Mandeville Tract at Mobile was 
called for him, and after the founding of New Or- 
leans the family were prominent there, even down 
into American times. On the corner opposite the 
priests was the engineer, M. de Paillou, who laid off 
Mobile, Fort Toulouse, and later Fort Rosalie ac 
Natchez. 

There was but one wharf in French times, the 
King's Wharf. Bienville originally built it north of 
the fort, and its cedar logs still remain, buried under 
the soil. Afterwards it was rebuilt in a more sub- 
stantial manner in front of the fort. Over this 
passed all imports and exports. The exports were 

48 



mainly hides, in winter furs and beaver skins, be- 
sides naval stores and some timber. The imports 
were everything needed for the colony and for the 
presents annually made to the Indian tribes to keep 
them in good humor. Canary wine was sometimes 
brought in Spanish boats, for Spanish wine as yet 
was even more famous than French. The different 
French soldiers, by dispensation from a royal decree 
to the contrary, had space reserved on incoming 
ships to bring over furniture, wane, or anything else 
wdiich they needed. Supplies did not all go to the 
royal magasin, for we know that there w^ere many 
marchands, or shopkeepers, at Mobile, and Avhen the 
magasin ran low the governor did not hesitate to 
press their goods for public purposes. 

The plans of Old Mobile at Twenty-seven Mile 
'Bluff gave names of streets and people, while that 
of New Mobile in 1711 omits both. The word 
habitant was domesticated at Mobile just as it was 
at Montreal, but no names of habitans are given on 
our map. Some habitans are known to have moved 
to Mobile, but their residences are unknown, for this 
map gives only the officials. There were many 
habitans, voyageurs, employees, whose names we do 
not know, as is true of the soldiers also ; but if we 
miss the godly family named Dieu on the plan of the 
old city, at least we also miss in the new Mathieu 
Sagean, who, if he had been named Cook, would 
have been a chef. La Pointe lived at Scranton, and 
Alexandre on Dauphine Island, but were probably 
at first in Mobile. 

A remarkable feature of the new settlement is 
that none of the streets, with the possible exception 
of St. Francis, bears the name which we saw in the 

49 



town at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff. There is no rea- 
son to suppose that there has been any change since 
1711 in the name of streets north of Government. 
Those extending from the present Government to 
Theatre street, and all east and west streets further 
south were to be laid out anew by the Americans. 
One or two hit the old lines, but unless we were to 
guess that Theatre street bore the name of Bien- 
ville and Government street the name of Iberville as 
up the river, we have no clue to the nomenclature. 

The esplanade up the river was called Place 
Royale, and probably this was true at New Mobile. 
To this it may be due that the front street of French 
times has ever since been called Royal. The next 
street west was St. Charles, now St. Emanuel, but 
what the third street, renamed Conception by the 
Spaniards, was under the French we do not know. 
At all events, the habit of calling streets from the 
people who live on them, a custom of small towns, 
was left behind, and the streets of the new settle- 
ment were at an early date named for prominent 
people or institutions. Conti was called for the 
great family of that p.ame, and Dauphin commemo- 
rates the remarkable change which death wrought 
now in the royal family. Dauphine Island relates 
to the same occurrence. 

The new settlement was at first smaller than the 
old, but it enjoyed a better site and unlike the old 
was to prove permanent. 

XL— THE GREAT HAT QUESTION. 

While Bienville was acting on his own responsi- 
bility in Louisiana in moving 'the capital from Twen- 
ty-seven Mile Bluff to the present site of Mobile, im- 

50 



portant events were occurring in France. Bienville 
did not know it, but 'in the very April, 1711, in wliicli 
he was arranging for his change of base, the Dau- 
phin died and the whole court of Louis XIV also 
made a 'change of base. Louis' grandson, the Duke 
of Burgundy, a pupil of Fenelon, became Dauphin, 
and his wife, the charming Duchess, became the 
Dauphine, for whom our Dauphine Island was to be 
namecL 'The Duke of St. Simon was now in his glory 
and was prosecuting The Great Hat Question. 

This was Avhether the president of the great 
French court called the Parlement should or should 
not take off 'his hat when the Dukes of France at- 
tended as members. 

There was also a Great Hat Question in Louisiana, 
for shij^s arrived very seldom. The 'ladies made up 
lor hats by the use of feathers, ribbons, and it must 
be confessed by rats also ; for the coifures of that 
day were among the most marvelous inventions of 
history. Of course, those of Versailles were not 
quite reproduced in Louisiana, but Mobile Avas a 
piece of France, an extraterritorial city, so to speak, 
and as such followed, as nearly as possible, the 
French fashions. The dependence of the official 
class, — and they made up a large part of the Mobile 
population, — upon Versailles was something which 
has not been often paralleled, and if Marlborough 
could dispute the military supremacy of France, at 
least no one. as a recent writer expressed it, has 
from the time of Louis XIV disputed the milinery 
supremacy of Paris. "We do not know that the Mo- 
biliennes imitated the extravagance of their French 
sisters, but the pictures which Paul LaCroix gives 
of headdresses imitating ships might well have been 

.^1 



designed in Mobile ; for longing for a ship from 
France was the only thing in which all agreed. 

Of armor we know something, but that was rare, 
and of Indian dress more ; but we are not told a 
great deal about the colonial costume of the day, 
for we are met with the lack of private letters and 
journals which even later has troubled Southern his- 
torians, French 'or English. The Yankees are much 
more given to writing on private affairs than the 
habitans of Louisiana or Canada. Bienville and the 
other officials hardly ever discussed such matters. 
The skirts — jupes — of the ladies receive an occa- 
sional mention, however, and we may well imagine 
that some of these assumed the great balloon shape 
which was so common in France. The Andrienne'is 
spoken of as a kind of flowing drapery, — possibly 
we have in it some reminder of the pleat which the 
painter Watteau was making fashionable by his 
pictures. Robe was the generic for women's cos- 
tumes then, as it is now, but details are Avanting. 
Penticaut is our chief authority, and he was at this 
time a bachelor and could know little of the subject, 
even at what he could 'learn from the clothes lines of 
the "plusieurs femmes" in the suburbs. 

When we come to the men we know more, but our 
knowledge is mainly negative ; 'for there is constant 
complaint that they did not have enough clothes. 
Bienville every now and then acknowledges the ar- 
rival of coats and shirts for the 'men, but says that 
socks have not come, and as for hat, it is seldom 
mentioned. The Indians, we are told, wore a 
**braguet,"'but we have little information as to the 
habitans. Perhaps in the nature of the case they 
sometimes anticipated the French Revolution and 

52 



were Sansculottes. They occasionally had very se- 
vere weather at Mobile in winter, but this was easily 
met by the skins and furs which came for export to 
France. There was not much trouble about shoes, 
for tanneries were set up in the colony, and in this 
respect the people were independent of France. 

No doubt much of the clothing was made up in 
Mobile, but there were no manufactories. The Eng- 
glish government was industrious in preventing the 
erection of manufactories in their colonies, but the 
French had no such trouble. The absolute govern- 
ment of Louis XIV made everyone dependent on the 
court at home and every colony dependent upon 
France, and indeed many of the articles were made 
up there. As to material, cotton was becoming more 
common, its habitat being still in Mexico and other 
southern countries, but wool had not yet been de- 
posed from its' pre-eminence. It came mainly from 
England,^ and made Flanders the manufacturing 
centre of the world. Taffeta is mentioned, but the 
principal goods brought to America were Limbourg, 
Mazamet, Rouen, and they were largely used in the 
Indian trade. Every ship brought a consignment of 
these materials. 

It would have been well if the French government 
had encouraged the manufacture of cloth and other 
articles in Louisiana, but the factories of France 
were languishing and desired every market possible. 
St. Simon tells us that the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes twenty-six years before had now become 
severely felt. The expulsion of the Huguenots had 
affected ever:t industry, particularly in South 
France, and not only so, but the exiles carried their 
knowledge and skill to Holland, Germany and Eng- 

5,S 



land to build up rivals in trade. This and the war 
were the two reasons the supplies from France were 
infrequent and unsatisfactory. 

A native linen made from the fibre of the mul- 
berry bark is sometimes mentioned, but silk played 
little part at Mobile, except in the dress of a few 
ladies. It must be remembered that not only was 
Bienville not married, but the other officers were 
there for short times and did not always bring their 
families with them. This was not true from 1712, 
however, for the new governor was to bring his 
large family, — several of them young ladies, — and 
from that time there was a kind of court at Mobile ; 
for Cadilac was to prove very punctilious. 

The Great Hat Question of France related to 
whether nobles or the lawyers should take off their 
hats. In Mobile, the Grea^t Hat Question in 1711 
was how to get any hats at all. 

XIL— A CHATEAU ON THE BAY. 

Iberville had been disappointed in getting the 
lands about Mobile Bay ceded to him as a fief, but 
the practical Bienville built a chateau on what we 
call Garrow's Bend for a summer residence. Per- 
haps a nobleman of France would have laughed at a 
chateau built of lumber sawed on the spot and with 
open gallery looking out over the blue waters ; but 
it was more comfortable than a stone castle would 
have been. The furniture was ample, consisting of 
armoire, tables, chairs and bed, all brought from 
France and in the style which Louis XIV had made 
the vogue. There Bienville spent his^ummers when 
not called off on duty. From his gallery he could 
follow the movements of the shipping, great and 

54 



small, and from the end of his spider-legged pier, 
jutting out to deep water, he could bathe and fish 
at will. Hunting and fresh water fishing were also 
near at hand, for a tramp of a mile or two through 
the woods would bring him to Dog River, famous 
then and since. 

All around grew the stately magnolia and the pe- 
can, the evergreen live oak and the black and other 
oaks of this climate. The persimmon — which the 
French called plaquemine from the Choctaw word — - 
the walnut, the cherry, the long-leaved tulip, and 
the locust or acacia were not far away, and the 
funereal cypress could be seen in a swamp near by. 

Bienville was not a botanist, although the system 
of Tournefort was popularized in Europe, soon to be 
succeeded by Linnaeus. But he took interest in his 
garden, where were flowers as well as vegetables. 
Lijies were native and the fences were overhung 
with Cherokee roses, but the cultivated roses of our 
day were not yet introduced from France. Jessa- 
mine, begonia, smilax and aster were native to the 
soil and needed no cultivation. It was in his vege- 
tables, however, that the practical Bienville, looking 
out for his colonists, took most interest. The potato, 
not yet called Irish because it was really American, 
of course took the leading place, but turnips and 
the other bulbous plants w^ere not generally culti- 
vated outside of industrious Holland. Peas, beans 
and especially Indian corn came down from the In- 
dians themselves, and formed the staple dishes of 
the table. Bienville hardly had space upon his 
town lot to have a garden, and he therefore devoted 
more attention to this suburban place. He realized 
from the beginning that agriculture must be the 

55 



basis of the colony, although it was hard to get the 
habitans away from the more lucrative Indian and 
Spanish trade. 

Whether Bienville went further and experimented 
with cotton and indigo, which were soon to be so 
prominent, we do not know\ At this early date 
they form no item in the exports. He was much 
interested in tobacco, and if he did not experiment 
at Mobile, he certainly did at Natchez and other 
parts of the colony. This was ultimately to be one 
of the great Louisiana products. Grapes w^ere miss- 
ing except the muscadine, and wine came from Spain 
or France. 

The pleasant Charlevoix seems never to have come 
to Mobile, but Bienville met him some ten years 
later, and in after years was to know something of 
the book which the father wrote upon his travels in 
North America. Half of the fourth volume was to 
be taken up with the description of the flora. It is 
very likely that Bienville in his tramps abroad 
would pay no attention to the wild plants, but the 
learned Jesuit w^as, like many of his day, interested 
in the materia medica which the Ncav World opened 
to the Old. The candle myrtle was rather .useful for 
commerce than medicine, but the plant which the 
French called ipecacuanha, and the English the May 
apple, was to prove a valuable discovery. The sun- 
flower was to furnish aconite, and even the lowly sar- 
acenia was a specific in its way. Gensing was useful 
from Canada to the Gulf, and sassafras not only sup- 
plied a tea, but its ground leaves were to originate 
the famous Creole gumbo. The cassine or youpon 
furnished the black drink which the Indians took 
before going on the war-path, and its medicinal 

56 



properties were also to be valued by the habitans. 

While Charlevoix was on the lookout for medi- 
cinal knowledge, he did not despise flowers which 
were merely grateful to the eye. He pictures for us 
i'uUy the jack-in-the-pulpit, known to him as the 
Virgin's Slipper (sabot), and he tells also of the 
sweet shrub, together with many other pleasant 
.things. 

The fauna of the country was familiar to Bien- 
ville, for he was a thorough woodsman; but the ani- 
mals need not detain us, since, with the exception of 
the buffalo, they remain with us until now. The 
French even introduced some new ones. Horses 
were still rare, but cows, although the French strain 
had not been improved, were common enough. The 
business of herding was becoming almost as impor- 
tant under the French as among the Spaniards fur- 
ther south. Some of the early explorers found 
chickens on the lower Mississippi, but these came 
from some Spanish shipwreck. The poultry of Bien- 
ville's day was imported by himself and soon as- 
sumed great importance. 

Bienville's chateau was truly French and life 
there was pleasant in every way. His friends were 
entertained with music, cards, and to some extent 
with books ; but after all the unique feature con- 
sisted of the beautiful view over the bay and the 
''bel jardin" to which Penicaut so lovingly refers. 

XIII.— INFANT INDUSTRIES. 

It is only since Lord Durham's report in 1830 that 
any nation has begun to recognize colonies as exist- 
ing for themselves. All colonial empires have been 
founded on the idea that colonists were merely 

5T. 



hands for the home country, designed to extract 
from the New whatever would be useful to the Old 
World. This was the notion held by France in the 
time of Louis XIV, and the main question as to in- 
dustries was what would best supply France. 

Columbus' discovery was a mere accident, and 
when the matter of colonization was taken up Spain 
sought for gold and silver, and other nations fol- 
lowed only to seek also for precious metals. Mining 
is one of the extractive industries and is of somewhat 
the same nature as the fur trade, cattle raising and 
even the logging business. They are all pioneer in- 
dustries, and sometimes rather injure a country 
than built it up. Productive rather than extractive 
is agriculture, for in the first place it supplies the 
colonial market and may afford a surplus for ex- 
port which gradually builds up capital. Perhaps 
most remunerative of all industries are manufac- 
tures, because the labor expended produces finer 
articles and secures greater returns. Necessary for 
any and all of these industries, however, is what is 
called trade in retail and commerce in its wholesale 
branches. "Which of all these occupations predomi- 
nated in early Louisiana? 

It was soon discovered that there w^as little in the 
way of mines on the Gulf of Mexico, ^although Le 
Sueur and afterwards Cadillac found minerals, par- 
ticularly copper, near the sources of the Mississippi. 
This, however, went more readily through Canada 
than Mobile. It was still thought a possibility in 
Crozat's time, and even later, for the sources of the 
Red River were supposed to be in the country from 
which the Spaniards drew some of the precious 

58 



metals of Mexico; but, although the king reserved 
one-fifth as his share, there was little realized. 

Of furs and peltry there is a different tale to tell. 
Much was anticipated from the hair of the buffalo, 
but this was found too coarse and was soon aban- 
doned. Beaver skins were found in abundance, but 
the best were from the Northwest, and Canadian in- 
fluence soon prevented their reaching the sea via 
Louisiana. Furs and skins of other wild animals, 
however, always formed a large part of the exports. 
Domestic animals were never grown in sufficient 
quantity for export. Iberville tried to introduce the 
Spanish sheep, but the attempt was soon given up,, 
and the Spanish colonists retained their monopoly 
of cattle raising. Hogs flourished, and these de- 
spised animals here as in the rest of the w^orld form- 
ed the main staple for home consumption. Horses 
were valuable for agricultural purposes, and, al- 
though introduced by the Spaniards and the breed 
improved by Iberville, practically none existed in 
the colony when D 'Artaguiette made his Domesday 
survey in 1708. 

In agriculture we must distinguish the gardens 
from the plantations. There were always vege- 
tables, even on sandy Dauphine Island, but much 
time was lost experimenting with seeds from France,, 
and it was some years before it was found that even 
wheat would not flourish in the Gulf country. The 
same resulted from the spasmodic attempts to intro- 
duce silk, and ultimately attention was concentrated 
on plantations for tobacco and indigo. These proved 
to be successful and led ultimately to a large export 
trade. It was doubtless agriculture that caused the 
introduction of slavery, first of Indians and after- 

59 



wards of negroes. The negroes at first came from 
the French West Indies, but Crozat, and afterwards 
Law's Company, were obliged to bring them annual- 
ly from Guinea. During the Mobile period, how- 
ever, it cannot be said that agriculture had assumed 
the position which one would expect. Few farmers 
were brought out among the immigrants, and agri- 
culture in France was at this time at a low ebb, and 
famine frequently prevailed. The peasants were 
despised socially, although in the long run it was 
they who not only supported the court, but paid the 
big war budget of that time. 

Of manufacturing there was little, for, except for 
silk in the South of France, woollen goods in the 
Northeast, and fancy articles about Paris, manufac- 
tures had not survived the wreck of Colbert's plans 
by the wars of Louis XIV. Manufacture still meant 
hand-made, for machinery was in its infancy and the 
factory system unknown. If we can count sawmills 
under this head, there was something to show about 
Mobile. In 1718 Law's Company directed the new 
governor to investigate carefully the mill of M. 
Mean, situated on a stream about a league from Mo- 
bile, but tradition has lost the site of this first flour- 
ishing sawmill. Bricks were also made in the vicin- 
ity and a great deal of lime came from the oyster 
shells, although naturally these products were main- 
ly for home consumption. Much was expected and 
something realized from naval stores. The first time 
Iberville went to Mobile he got a mast for the Pal- 
mier, and tar was made in quantity. Of finer man- 
ufactures there is little or nothing said. 

The trade of that day was both internal and ex- 
ternal, — with the Indians and with France and the 



Spanish colonies. Both Crozat's and Law's exploita- 
tions were based largely upon commerce. Even dur- 
ing wartime, Avhen there were few merchant vessels, 
the king relaxed his law against carrying merchan- 
dise so far as to make his ships bring whatever was 
offered as freight. In Mobile there were shopkeep- 
ers at least from 1707, and they are frequently 
mentioned afterwards. Their name, ''marchand,'' 
is generic and is applied equally to such men as the 
twenty-five voyageurs engaged in the trade among 
the Illinois and to the resident shopmen. It would 
be interesting to see one of these little shops. It 
would doubtless be the front room of the colonial 
home, with wares displayed in the window, and the 
business conducted as often by the wife as by the 
husband. The wares would embrace everything 
from a plow to a wooden shoe, and we may be sure 
that even the ribbons, silks and millinery of France 
would not be lacking. The time had not yet come 
for shops having one line of goods. Each contained 
v/hat now would be called general merchandise. 

Mechanics and artisans were well known. Iber- 
ville insisted upon them from the beginning. He 
sent over four families of artisans in the Pelican, 
and next year we have the name of a carpenter. 
The mediaeval guilds still influenced nomenclature, 
although they hardly existed otherwise in Mobile. 
The carpenter is master carpenter, and the same is 
true even of such military employments as armorer 
and cannoneer. 

On the whole, therefore. Mobile w^as quite a flour- 
ishing little tow^n, and the centre of Indian and do- 
mestic trade for a large territory, but its chief in- 
dustries were trading and in raw materials. 



XIV.— COLONIAL HOMES. 

John Fiske never wrote more charming pages than 
those in which he ascribes the different social char- 
acteristics of the North and South to the differing 
locations of the chimney in the houses. In New 
England, he says, the chimney is in the centre of 
the house, thus giving a fireplace iit each room, no 
matter how small the number of rooms. This was 
necessary in order to warm the houses in that severe 
climate, and made the hearthstone the rallying point 
of the family. Down South, on the other hand, the 
type was the log cabin, consisting of two end 
rooms separated by an open passageway through 
the centre, each room having a separate chimney on 
the outside. There was less need of heat and the 
social centre was rather the open dining room in 
this hall. Fiske 's idea is that the Northerner lived in- 
doors in winter and the Southerner in summer, re- 
versing customs with the climate. In any event, 
climate affects dwellings as well as clothing and cus- 
toms. 

Mr. Fiske, however, did not notice that an impor- 
tant addition in the lower South was the porch, cov- 
ering the front of this hallway. In Virginia it be- 
comes the stately portico that we find in General 
Lee's old home at Arlington, and in Charleston it is 
the long, wide piazza which always faces the sea. 
Up in New York there is only a little Dutch stoop, 
and in New England a cover over the door. 

When one reaches the Southwest, at Mobile and 
beyond, this piazza has assumed a different form 
and is known as the front gallery. It may be, as on 
the Atlantic, an extension of the central hall, or it 

fi2 



may open directly upon rooms which join each other 
without halls; but a house without a gallery is a 
rarity and is undesirable in this warmer climate. 
Here the Creole gallery has conquered the Eastern 
porch and practically driven out the word. All these 
words are foreign and show a South European 
origin. 

Maurice Thompson dubs this gallery a Creole in- 
stitution; and it surely is. It was brought here by 
the Canadians, however, and its primitive form is 
still found along the St. Lawrence. It is there a pro- 
jection from the house and does not rest upon pillars 
as with us. It is called galerie, the French form, as 
with the Southern Creoles. But from what part of 
France did the Canadians get it? If one travels 
through France, or if one looks at the illustrations 
under the word House in the new edition of the En- 
cyclopedia Britannica, he will find nothing corre- 
sponding to our gallery. In that thickly settled 
country, the assembly place, so far as the weather 
permitted, was the porte eochere within the house, 
or the court and garden into which this opened. The 
origin of our gallery is therefore unsolved. 

We have no illustrations of the Mobile house of 
1711, but We have pictures of Dauphine Island places 
a few years later. These show one-story houses with 
the chimney at one end, but, with perhaps two ex- 
ceptions, no galleries or even sheds in front. They 
give us one striking feature, however, of Creole 
architecture, — the roof sloping to the front and to 
the rear. The American pioneer's cabin uniformly 
slopes also to the front, but the house is generally 
longer and the slope therefore is proportionately 
less than with the old Creole houses. These, like 

68 



those of the habitant along the St. Lawrence, have 
a curving slope so as partially to project over the 
front gallery. Tiles and even shingles were rare, 
and thatch, often of palmetto, was common. Some 
examples of early roofs are left in Mobile, but more 
are preserved in the French quarter of the daughter 
city, New Orleans. 

One singular feature was that, although there was" 
plenty of land, the houses were built near the street, 
and, instead of having front yards as with the Eng- 
giish. Flowers as well as vegetables were grown in a 
garden or court behind the house. Glass for win- 
dows was rare even in France, and solid shutters 
were the rule. 

There were few public buildings, and they dif- 
fered from the residences in size rather than other- 
wise. It was not yet the age of stone, hardly even 
of brick except for cellars and the like. Even two- 
story houses were rare. Visitors to and from Mex- 
ico, — New Spain, — were not unknown, but there was 
not here any use of its adobe houses, gradually ap- 
proaching over the narrow streets. The principal 
public buildings of 1711 were inside the fort, and 
they were not of a permanent character until the 
reconstruction of that stronghold of brick. Most of 
the buildings were frame, or wooden frames filled 
in with oyster shell plaster. Whitewash was used, 
and the streets were probably shelled, so far as any- 
thing was done to them at all. Vines and trees 
abounded, and the little city perched on the bluff 
marked by Royal street, dominated by the ramparts 
of Fort Louis, was a picturesque sight to any visitor. 
There was little imposing, perhaps, but there was 
much comfort and the savoir vivre which has mark- 
ed Mobile from the beginning. 

64 



XV.— ANCIENT PLACE NAMES THAT 
SURVIVE, 

The name Mobile comes from the Indians once met 
by DeSoto somewhere below Selma, and whose rem- 
nants were known by Iberville near Mt. Vernon. 
The influence of this tribe was far out of proportion 
to its numbers. The French do not tell us the mean- 
ing of the name. Tradition had no doubt long since 
lost it, and it has been left for modern scholars to 
find that the word probably means Paddlers, — mark- 
ing connection of navigation with even the primitive 
Mobilians. The French settlement was not original- 
ly called Mobile, but Fort Louis, the words de la Mo- 
bile being added to distinguish it from other settle- 
ments of the same name. The name Mobile, how- 
ever, belonged to the bay and river as well as to the 
Indian tribe, and even from the first many of the 
colonists called their new settlement La Mobile. It 
was named for Louis XIV and was not one 'of the 
many St. Louis settlements. It was analogous to 
the great Port Louis which the king sought to build 
on the w^est coast of France. The official term Fort 
Louis gradually faded out and La Mobile became 
the name of the town. 

Place names are among the most lasting of human 
things, as w^e see all over America in the Indian 
names of rivers and mountains. Some aboriginal 
names survive Mobile, such as Chocolochee and 
Chucfey Bays, and that most interesting name 
Chickasabogue, — which points back to some time 
when the Chickasaws were not confined to Northern 
Mississippi as in historic days. *'Bogue" was the 
Choctaw word "bok," softened by the French into 



'■'bayou," meaning the slow, sluggish creek of our 
Gulf regions. But the Indian names immediately 
about Mobile are few, indicating that there was not 
a large native population and that there was an ex- 
tensive French settlement. Some of the Indian 
names are given by the French. So Choctaw' Point 
was called for the Indians whom Bienville placed 
there, and the same is true of Tensaw and Apalache 
Rivers further east. 

The dispatches of Bienville do not give many local 
details, but the contemporary notes of Penicaut 
have a great deal of local color. He tells us that he 
was with Iberville on the first explorations of the 
Mobile country in 1699 and afterwards. He notes' 
that our Dauphine Island was named Massacre from 
a large pile of human bones found near its west end, 
that Deer and Fowl Rivers were named for their 
game, and Dog River for a dog lost there. 

The place names immediately about Mobile are 
generally French. Thus One Mile Creek is a descrip- 
tion only; the name is' Bayou Marmotte, — so called 
from a small animal of that name. Similarly, Three 
Mile Creek is really Bayou Chateaugue, commem- 
orating Bienville's sailor brother, one of the most 
interesting characters in colonial history. On Dau- 
phine Island are many French names, — one recalling 
Chateaugue and another merchant Graveline, — and 
on the opposite coast are Coden, La Batre (Battrie) 
and others. Bon Secours Bay, which supplies our 
oysters, was possibly called for the church at Mont- 
real, Notre Dame de Bon Secours, so dear to all 
sailors. High up on Bayou Chateaugue, near the 
present bridge to Toulminville, is a shallow place 
called The Portage, in early American times the 

fifi 



northwest boundary of the city. This ford was on 
the Indian trade route from Mobile to the Choctaw 
Nation. One of the sources of Dog River is Bayou 
Durand, commemorating a somewhat later French 
family, and the district between these streams and 
Mobile River Avas in French times well settled by 
colonists. Preferably they faced the rivers and 
bayous, for the purpose of hunting, fishing and 
transportation. 

Chickasabogue was apparently known to the 
French as St. Louis River, and the magnificent ex- 
panse of land which we call St. Louis Tract was 
called for this stream. It was an early French grant, 
like the Mandeville Tract on the bay below the city, 
although not dating back to the foundation of the 
city in 1711. This St. Louis Tract was originally 
granted to D'Artaguiette after the Apalache Indians 
were moved over to the east side of the Mobile delta, 
about the middle of the century, and mark a genu- 
ine extension of the Mobile colony. There was an- 
other grant made somewhat later to Madame De- 
Lusser, the widow of a distinguished officer who fell 
in the Chickasaw war, which was w'ithin the present 
city limits and marked the decadence of the city. It 
extended from the river near Theatre street west- 
wardly to the present Protestant Orphan Asylum, 
making a puzzle to modern abstractors of title. 
Madame DeLusser placed her slaves there for the 
purpose of cultivation, and this shows how^ the town 
must have shrunk tow^ards the end of the French 
period; for it takes uj:) what in 1711 and later was a 
w^ell occupied part of the river front. 

The streets all had French names, but only Royal, 
Dauphin and possibly St. Louis have retained them. 



A dozen or more French names disappeared under 
the later Spanish rnle which furnishes so many of 
the present names. 

The St. Louis, Mandeville and DeLusser Tracts, 
and Mon Louis Island, — this last a grant by Cadillac, 
— are probably the only French grants that survive. 
The population, however, was to remain French dur- 
ing the succeeding British and Spanish periods and 
even far down into American times. 



fi8 



III. 

UNDER CROZAT AND AFTER. 

XVI.— COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. 

Colonial administration implies two elements, — . 
the part played by the home government and that 
by the local officials. France was so centralized 
that ^ the first was much greater than in English 
colonization, and at first this was a source of 
strength. Lender Louis XIV the king was supreme, 
but he had many agents. Originally the royal coun- 
cil, made up of the dukes and other nobles, was, with 
the king, the head of the State ; but Louis gradually 
raised bourgeois, like Colbert and Louvois, to high 
places, making them all but prime ministers. This 
disgusted St. Simon and the old nobles, but turned 
out well. The minister of the marine, or navy, were 
the Pbntchartrains, father and then son. For 
America, colonial control centred at Rochefort, 
which had an intendant, commissaire ordonnateur^ 
controleur and treasurer, who made this place for 
France somewhat what the Casa de Contratacion 
had made Seville for Spain. Le Rochelle, nearby, 
w^as one of the great entrepots of France. 

After the death of Louis XIV, St. Simon succeed- 
ed in having the ministers superseded by committees 
of the council, made up of noblemen. The con- 
trolling mind of the navy council was Toulouse, a 
natural son of Louis XIV and a man of ability. But 
the Regent found these committees cumbersome and 
gradually drifted back again to ministers of the 
marine and other departments. During both periods 



there was little change at Rochefort. Even colonial 
money was struck there when that came in 1721, al- 
though the nature of the colonial government had 
then varied again and centred in John Law and his 
company. 

The local machinery in Louisiana knew three dis- 
tinct periods. The first, that of settlement, extend- 
ing through the removal to present Mobile, was 
royal and military. The second was from 1712, 
when Crozat was granted the colony as a trade '^ven- 
ture, like the French and English East India Com- 
panies. The third, — beyond our present investiga- 
tion. — was when the Crozat experiment had been 
improved on in 1717 by founding the Mississippi 
Company. What of these methods of government? 

Mr. Roosevelt is evidently delighted when, in his 
"Winning of the West," he comes to tell how 
American settlers got together under a tree at AVa- 
tauga and set up^a form of government. And justly 
so, for here were frontiersmen illustrating in modern 
times Aristotle's maxim that man is a political ani- 
mal. There is a government wherever people group 
themselves together in a settled community. It is 
found even among children. It can be illustrated in 
the early history of Louisiana as well as at Watauga. 
It is true there Avas a different race of men, ^ and they 
went about it in a different manner. Louis XIV 
sent over a ready-made government, just as now-a- 
days we get a ready-made cottage from the manu- 
facturers. But in both cases it was what the people 
were used to and it was satisfactory to them. Louis' 
government represented public opinion at Mobile 
as much as that in France. 

70 



Under Iberville and afterwards under Bienville 
the royal commandant was supreme. There was a 
i>arde magasin, afterwards a commissaire in charge 
of royal property, but the most that he could do was 
to spy on his superior and trust to reports working 
to his prejudice in France. So long as the governor 
was in Louisiana the commissaire had to submit. 
We find him criticized by the commissaire La Salle 
from the beginning, and as a result D 'Artaguiette 
was sent over in 1708 to investigate, and he returned 
four years later and was succeeded by Duclos. Both 
of these men were friends of Bienville. There was 
not then even in France the division which seems ob- 
vious to us between legislative, judicial and execu- 
tive departments, — for the king, and in Louisiana 
his representative, was all three. The governor was 
even notary also and witnessed papers. 

Iberville was in 1703 appointed commandant in 
chief, but was not in Louisiana afterwards and did 
not establish a system. Bienville was practically in 
command until 1713, for although in 1707 he was 
removed, his successor died before reaching America 
and Bienville held over. A check on him was in- 
tended in D 'Artaguiette, but D 'Artaguiette ap- 
proved Bienville's policy. Cadillac succeeded in 
1713, but was not Bienville's equal as an administra- 
tor, and had to make use of Bienville even against 
his will. Bienville was the controlling spirit in 
Louisiana as long as he was in it, no matter who was 
governor. 

We need not think that autocracy was peculiar to 
the French. Even a third of a century later the 
English government of George II pursued the same 
plan, and General Oglethorpe also was a kind of 

71 



Poo Bah in Georgia for a number of j^ears. It is 
probably essential at the beginning of colonial gov- 
ernment. 

In Georgia the trustees came first and only after- 
wards was there royal government, while in Louisi- 
ana the process was reversed. In the English colon- 
ies, whatever the form of government, it was really 
but a shield for popular institutions. In Louisiana 
the question was between royalty and a trading 
company and there was no growth of a democracy. 
There were no popular meetings or town councils. 
Such was the genius of the two races. The ex- 
haustion of France in the War of the Spanish Suc- 
cession led Louis XIV to farm out his new province 
nominally to Antoine Crozat, but Crozat represented 
a syndicate. It was after all only a partial abdica- 
tion by the king, for he, while granting a trade mo- 
nopoly, retained power over the army, navy and 
forts. The governor was appointed before Crozat 's 
grant, but he retained the same man, Cadillac, who 
had founded Detroit about the same time that Mo- 
bile came into existence. The king says in the 
patent that he had been prevented from building up 
the trade of Louisiana by constant war, and that 
Crozat was such a successful merchant that it was 
hoped he would build up the American trade also. 
Somewhat as Queen Elizabeth had done in the case 
of her explorers, the king required that Crozat 
should turn over to him one-fifth of all gold, silver 
and precious stones discovered, and one-tenth of all 
other minerals. The monopoly of trade was for 
fifteen years, but the property rights were to be in 
perpetuity, subject to ''reunion" in the case of non- 
compliance with the grant. This patent was duly 

72 



registered by the Parlement of Paris, which was 
much more than a record office. Some years later it 
refused to register the grant to John Law. 

The governmental relations of Louisiana were now 
changed under Crozat. The province became nomi- 
nally connected with Canada, but practically it re- 
mained independent. Both had the Coutume de 
Paris as their civil law, but in Louisiana land was 
held in full ownership and not under a seigneur. In 
Canada they had a governor and an intendant, 
somewhat as in each province of France, but there is 
no separate intendant as yet for Louisiana. D'Ar- 
taguiette's coming in 1708 marked a change, but 
this commissaire ordonnateur and his successors at 
this time had not all the powers of an intendant. The 
two provinces were made similar, however, by grant- 
ing to Louisiana in 1712 a Superior Council, such as 
had long existed in the older colonies. This was a 
civil body composed of the governor, first councillor, 
royal lieutenant, two other councillors, attorney- 
general and clerk (greffier.) It had not only execu- 
tive, but had legislative, or at least administrative 
powers, and was a court besides. It heard cases, 
civil and criminal ; from it there was no appeal, but 
there could be a review from above (cassation). 
This was the germ of the judicial system of Louisi- 
ana, and was the closest approach to popular gov- 
ernment that the colony was to show. It was not 
elective but would have been fairly representative 
in any other hands than Cadillac's. 

Crozat managed the trade of Louisiana through 
directors whom he sent out. They were more in 
touch with the actual life of the colony than were 
the royal officers; but neither this nor the similar 

73 



administration later under John Law was strictly 
the government. That rested still with the Regent 
and was exercised through his ministry of the ma- 
rine. Ultimately the king resumed the colony, 
and, after the manner of Canada, established an in- 
tendant for civil justice and police over against the 
military governor; but that was in the thirties. 

XVII.— EXPANSION. 

The strong personality of the Le Moyne brothers 
dominates the founding of Louisiana and the bril- 
liant exploitation by John Law occupies a later stage 
before it settles down to stagnation under royal gov- 
ernors again. Between the founding and the Mis- 
sissippi Bubble Crozat and his ill-liked representa- 
tive Cadillac have been almost forgotten. And yet 
the five or six years under Crozat were those of first 
real growth, and were those in which Louisiana re- 
ceived its greatest expansion. Under the royal gov- 
ernment whichsucceeded Law, the story crystallized 
around the lower Mississippi, but, with the exception 
of the foundation of the trading post of St. Louis by 
Chouteau and of Vincennes up the Ouabache, and 
they were mere outposts, Louisiana did not grow in 
size after Crozat. It is true he did not formally ac- 
quire the Illinois as Law did, but it was within his 
sphere of influence. 

The earlier period might be thought of as one of 
exploration rather than real settlement, except in 
regard to the capital at Mobile. The Le Moyne 
brothers and Le Sueur spent the first few years 
exploring the Mississippi and its tributaries, but the 
War of the Spanish Succession in Europe prevented 
anything further. While it was found better to es- 

74 



tablish the capital on the coast, and not on the great 
river itself, one of the first acts of the French was 
to build a fort called La Boulaye on the lower Mis- 
sissippi. This was under St. Denij* and Bienville, 
but after colonial affairs were concentrated at Mo- 
bile even this fort was abandoned. 

The explorations were not merely tvr geographical 
reasons. It was, as all these efforts were, somewhat 
in the nature of a quest for the Golden Fleece. It 
turned out that there was no gold to be found, and 
even copper was far away at the sources of the Mis- 
sissippi; but profitable fleece there was after all in 
the nature of furs and skins of wild animals. Even 
beaver skins were brought down the Mississippi in 
abundance until the Canadian protest caused this to 
be stopped. With the Indian trade, however, we are 
not at present concerned. Although this was the 
original inducement for the settlements, these set- 
tlements can be considered for their own sakes. And 
it must not be forgotten that, in addition to the in- 
terests of geography and Indian trade, there was a 
third inspiration, both towards exploration and set- 
tlement. The English colonies bounded Louisiana 
on the east and the Spaniards of Mexico bounded it 
on the southwest. In this way from the very first 
there was a desire not only to define the limits, but 
to push French occupation as far into the interior 
as could be held. The voyageurs and afterwards the 
coureurs de bois afforded excellent agents for this 
work, and it may be doubted whether the priests, 
particularly the Jesuits in the North West, who 
came first, did not help more than the others. There 
IS no doubt that they were devout men and taught 
religion and incidentally civilization, but they were 

7.5 



also Frenchmen, and could not, if they had wished, 
avoid attaching the Indians to the French interest. 

Cadillac's chief interest was in trade, and he made 
vigorous commercial attempts towards Mexico, both 
by land and sea ; but all he could accomplish was a 
little in the way of smuggling. Towards Pensacola 
he was more successful, for the Pensacola garrisOn 
was cut off from all Spanish countries and was 
often in need. Pensacola could exchange Mexican 
gold and silver for flour and other supplies, while 
Mobile gave obligations redeemable in kind when 
the ships came from France. 

Cadillac's term was marked by several great steps 
of expansion. The Natchez in the West, were re- 
duced to subjection and Fort Rosalie (named for 
Mme. Pontchartrain) built there on the Mississippi, 
while in the East among the Alibamons, near our 
Wetumpka, was established Fort Toulouse, called 
for the king's natural son, which was to play a great 
part in international politics. Rosalie's Indian trade 
was not encouraged by Cadillac, but the fort kept 
the river communication open with Canada ; Tou- 
louse kept the four branches of the Muscogees free 
from English dominance, and even affected the 
Cherokees in the rear of Carolina. It was to be a 
sore thorn in the side of the English of Carolina and 
the future Georgia. 

Bienville was efficient in command, but there is* 
reason to think that he was not a guod subordinate. 
He had been the actual instrument for founding 
Fort Toulouse and was also the one who founded 
Fort Rosalie shortly afterwards. It was perhaps a 
stroke of policy when Crozat gave him an indepen- 
dent command of the Mississippi and its tributaries 

7fi 



in 1716. This afforded Bienville the opportunity 
which he need for influence among all the tribes of 
the Mississippi Valley, and upon it directly or indi- 
rectly rests much of his claim to be one of the 
makers of America. In the West, Natchitoches was 
occupied the next year, and a garrison stationed 
there, nominally to guard against the Spaniards, but 
practically to be a means of an overland smuggling 
trade with Mexico. St. Denis and then La Harpe 
were in command at this point for a number of years 
and did much towards opening the Ked River coun- 
try. 

In the other direction there was'always close in- 
timacy between Mobile and Pensacola, despite the 
official dispute as to the boundary, and even before 
the short war with Spain there came in 1718 the 
little known incident of the French occupation of 
St. Joseph far to the east. This act, which made 
P*ensacola an enclave in French territory, was 
actually in John Law's time, but before he had taken 
any steps towards his project of colonizing the Mis- 
sissippi. The western movement, however, was to 
cause the abandonment of St. Joseph the next year, 
and the Spaniards occupied it themselves. 

French exploration was marked by maps of value, 
leading ultimately to the great work of Delisle in the 
thirties. Probably no small part of the credit for 
the coast charts should be given to Bienville's 
brother Serigny, who came in 1719 in command of a 
squadron and sounded and explored much of the 
Gulf coast. One cannot fail to marvel at this Le 
Moyne family. The death of Iberville in 1706 
seemed only to draw out the strong qualities of the 
remaining brothers. Whether we look at Bienville, 

77 



Chateaugue or Serigny, the South has every cause to 
thank Montreal for her gift. 

Attention was to be concentrated henceforth on 
the Mississippi. The country of the Illinois Indians 
had been French headquarters even before the 
founding of Mobile. All voyageurs touched there, 
as had LeSueur going to the Sioux, and Cadillac 
passed through on his early expedition in sarch of 
gold mines. Kaskaskia grew to be a village of some 
importance, and, while Fort Chartres was actually 
built by Boisbriant under the direction of Law's 
Company, this was merely recognizing what had 
come to be an established post of an earlier date. 
The only reason Crozat had not built it was because 
in his day it was nominally attached to Canada. It 
grew to be a bone of contention between Canada and 
Louisiana, but ultimately under Law became part of 
the Gulf colony. 

The time of Crozat, therefore, is one well worth 
studying. In government, trade and external rela- 
tions it marked a departure, we may say an advance, 
on what it succeeded, and its basis of operations was 
Mobile. Crozat copied the provisions of the trading 
companies of his day, of which the greatest was that 
of the Indies, and applied them to American condi- 
tions, and the much better known epoch of John 
Law, which began with Crozat 's surrender in 1718, 
was in turn merely an expansion of the principles 
under which Crozat had acted. 

XVIIL— THE FIRST LAW BOOK. 

On the table lies a law book which might have 
been Bienville's and was certainly of the edition 
used by French governors of Louisiana. It comes 

7-S 



down through Alfred Hennen, and has New Orleans 
associations, but it was printed 1664 in the estab- 
lishment of Guillaume de Luyne, law bookseller, at 
the end of the Hall of Merchants, by the statue 
of Justice in the Palace, in old Paris on the island. 
It is a quarto entitled Le Droict Prancois et Cous- 
tume de la Prevoste & Vicomte de Paris, the text in 
large print being followed by a small print com- 
mentary, giving not only royal ordinances, but de- 
cisions of courts, other coutumes, and opinions of 
men learned in the law. This is the fmous book 
known as the Coutume de Paris, early made the law 
of Canada and other colonies, including Louisiana, 
by decrees of Louis XIV. This fourth edition is by 
Maistre Jean Troncon Avocat in Parlement and 
Seigneur of several districts. 

The principal divisions of modern law are Politi- 
cal, Civil and Criminal, and of these Civil is that 
which most affects every-day life. This may be sub- 
divided into the law^ of persons, property, contracts, 
torts and procedure. With these we exhaust the 
usual categories of law. But we find no such divis- 
ions in English law before Blackstone in the 
eighteenth century, and it would be vain to expect 
them in France. Nevertheless, the English Common 
Law and the French Coutumes ran parallel. This 
book gives French law before any Code Napoleon 
ever dreamed of, although the word ''code," bor- 
rowed from the Romans, was not unusual on the 
Continent. The volume is really made up of the 
customs prevailing in the district around Paris, 
dating from the old Teutonic invaders and modified 
from time to time by new customs and slightly by 
royal decrees. There were a dozen or more collec- 

19 



tions of customary law throughout France, originat- 
ing in the different districts in a similar way, and 
largely modified by the Roman Civil Law. They 
really made up the local law of France, and it was 
a question which, if any, would come to dominate 
the whole country as a Common Law. It is a curi- 
ous thing, that, although the government ecame 
highly centralized under Louis XIV, each province 
retained its customary law. The administration was 
still with the provincial nobility and magistrates, 
superintended by the intendants sent by the king 
from Paris. The Custom of Paris, however, was 
gaining ground, and the king was making it supreme 
throughout all the colonies established by the 
French. In this way it became law for Louisiana. 

It concerns itself principally with what we would 
call Civil Law, and in particular with the status of 
people and families and of the land which they oc- 
cupy. The first title, therefore, naturally relates to 
fiefs, for feudalism was still supreme. It describes 
the rights of the seigneur, and the rights and duties 
of his tenants as to crops, dues, military and civil, 
inheritance, and the like. Land tenure is possibly 
the most fundamental of all public institutions and 
was to change very much in America from the feu- 
dalism of Europe as a part of the modern trend from 
community to individual control. But in France of 
that day feudalism, resting on service to a superior, 
prevailed with little change from the Middle Ages. 
The seigneur got some profit at exery turn. The sys- 
tem existed in Canada, and seigneuries were said to 
be the basis of that colony; but the king seemed to 
feel instinctively that Louisiana colonists, who were 
to be in competition with the British of the Atlantic, 

80 



must have a freer ownership and greater liberties 
than the peasants of France. The general tenure, 
therefore, in Louisiana was roturier, if not franc 
aleu, corresponding closely to the fee simple owner- 
ship of England. This division of the Coutume also 
covers the seigneurs' courts, but these were replaced 
in America by the Superior Council and other courts. 
The second title relates to the seigneurial rents and 
rights (censives et droits), subjects of much the 
same character. • 

The third title relates to property, with its divis- 
ions into movables and immovables, — somewhat like 
our personal and real property. Title IV is confined 
to legal proceedings as to property, and Title V also 
relates to personal actions and also those growing 
out of mortgage (hypotheque). The sixth is on 
Prescription, and corresponds to the modern Statute 
of Limitations. This affected all kinds of property. 

Title VII covers Retrait Lagnager, which is a feu- 
dal right. Title VIII is on suits, executions and 
some kinds of contracts, particularly those requiring 
seal. Herein figure especially the rights of the 
bourgeois, or inhabitants of a city, — and there w^ere 
bourgeois for Mobile. Mobile was a bourg. Title 
IX is' of Servitudes or Easements, — rights in anoth- 
er's property. "With Title X we reach one of the 
most important characteristics of French law^ — the 
community or joint ownership of goods between hus- 
band and wife. This is one of the longest titles and 
followed naturally by the subject of dower. Then 
come tw^o short titles as to guardianship and gifts, 
and next Title XIV on Wills. XV on Successions or 
Administrations is, without doubt the longest of all. 

81 



The concluding Title XVI is on Criees, also of a feu- 
dal nature. 

The book gives lists of seigneuries in which the 
Coutume de Paris prevails, and one of the most in- 
teresting things about it is the Proces Verbal show- 
ing how these customs got edited. The king would 
issue a proclamation calling together the Bishop of 
Paris, councillors and representatives of the many 
different places and institutions subject to this 
Coutume, and, after debate, it would be determined 
that certain old articles were not now conformable 
to the existing custom, and should be rewritten. 

This was not thought of as legislation, law-mak- 
ing, but as declaratory of what the legal custom 
actually was. The revision in question was in the 
year 1580, and was made in the grand hall of the 
Seneschal of Paris. There the Customs were for- 
mally digested and revised under letters patent of 
the king, in proceedings occupying forty-nine quarto 
pages. It is to be noted that amongst the signatures 
and seals were those of Longueil, a name which was 
afterwards to be assumed by the Le Moynes in 
Canada. 

It will be observed, therefore, that the contents of 
this old book illustrate James Bryce's acute remark 
that the Roman Civil Law concerns itself mainly 
with the status of persons and property, including 
family and successions, while English Common Law 
concerns itself more especially with contracts and 
tort. The Civil Law is static, the Common Law 
dynamic. This is natural, as the English nation 
progressed earlier to commercial interests which de- 
pended on individual initiative. 



«2 



XIX.— THE SOLDIERS. 

The city plan of 1711 shows a square flag floating 
from a staff in the southeast bastion of Port Louis. 
It seems to be white and has dots on it : is there any- 
thing to be known about it ? 

We have become so accustomed to speaking af- 
fectionately of Old Glory, Union Jack, and the like 
that it gives something of a shock to find that na- 
tional flags are not an ancient institution. One won- 
ders at this in the monarchy of Louis XIV, but in 
point of fact the centralization was about the mon- 
arch and not of the nation, — '^L'etat, c'est moi." 
The nobility was exalted and attracted to Ver- 
sailles, although the provinces retained much of 
their colonial peculiarities, but the royal banner was 
not erected into a national ensign. The royal flag 
contained golden fleurs de lis, often three in num- 
ber, on either a blue or white ground, the difference 
depending on circumstances not very clear. Either 
was correct. On the Mobile plat the lilies seem to 
be arranged in a central square, which is unusual. 
The fleur de lis was the emblem of the Bourbon 
family, and it was not until the Great Revolution 
that the slumbering nationality of France awakened, 
and the tricolor became the national flag. Great 
Britain and even the United States had a true flag 
earlier than France. That containing the fleurs de 
lis was rather personal than national, and was used 
as representative of the king rther than as represen- 
tative of the country. 

Mobile was the only American city founded by 
Louis XIV and so it was appropriate that the royal 
banner, with gold lilies on a white ground, should 

83 



wave over it. The navy had a flag sooner than the 
army, and as naval officers governed Louisiana, the 
French flag was more prominent there than even in 
France. 

There has always been more or less rivalry be- 
tween the army and navy. Sometimes the navy has 
had to support the operations of the army, but in 
Louisiana we find the navy supreme. The country 
was necessarily discovered and settled by sea, and 
the government remained in the hands of the Minis- 
try of Marine, corresponding to our Navy Depart- 
ment. Iberville, Bienville and others were naval of- 
ficers, and for this reason we study the army under 
peculiar circumstances. The first garrison w^as of 
marines', but soon regular companies were raised in 
France to supply Louisiana. The French army un- 
der Louvois, Louis XIV 's great war minister, reach- 
ed a high pitch of development, but the modern 
army organization dates from a later time, — that of 
Frederick the Great. Even under Louvois the regi- 
ments, like the nobility, were called for the provinces. 
Companies were named for the officers who recruited 
them. Perhaps the earliest company in Mobile was 
the Polastron, and in 1704 a hundred men came by 
the Pelican to complete the Vaulezard and Chateau- 
gue companies and superseded the Canadians. 

The number of soldiers differed from time to 
time, but after the War of the Spanish Succession 
became serious in Europe few could be spared for 
America. In 1708 the total garrison was 122. Prob- 
ably never more than four companies were quarter- 
ed in early Mobile, and generally it was two. There 
were two in 1708 when 30 recruits were sent from 
France. For 1711 the expense was 25,000 livres, in 

84 



1715, 32,000 livres, when Mandeville 's and Bajot's' 
companies came over. Even in 1717 it was with an 
effort that four companies in addition to those in 
Louisiana were raised in France, and of these but 
three came at one time. And this was in the time 
of Crozat, Avhen peace in Europe and colonial re- 
organization enabled the Regent to do more than 
had been possible under Louis XIV. Many soldiers 
were from Switzerland, for the Swiss, like the 
Italians of old, rented out their men. Not a few 
found their way to Mobile, — the famous Grondel 
for one. 

In Louisiana we find -only infantry and coast ar- 
tillery; for the dashing cavalry of Europe would 
have little opportunity in the forests of America. 
Even the artillery was confined to forts on the wa- 
ter; for field artillery was as yet not much used 
and could not readily be moved in a country without 
roads, and Frederick had not yet popularized flying 
artillery. In 1718 there were thirty-five pieces at 
Mobile and Dauphin e Island, with and without car- 
riages, and the number was not greatly altered af- 
terAvards. Bienville planned to carry some up 
against the Chickasaws, but was not able to do 
nuich even in 1736. One of the French cannon can 
still be seen in the Public Square at Mobile. The 
infantry was the great arm of the service. It car- 
ried heavy flintlock muskets, four and a half feet 
long, and surmounted by ''baionettes" in 1706, — in- 
. struments practically the invention of Yauban. 
They marked progress, for they abolished the old 
pikeman, but were themselves to be abandoned in 
America after some years as unsuited to the tangled 
thickets. Drums were common enough, but bands 

85 



came only later. The favorite song, — almost a na- 
tional air, so far as they had one, — was a satire on 
Marlborough, and is preserved to us in ''He's a 
Jolly Good Fellow." There was from 1703 a regu- 
lar blue uniform for the royal household troops, but 
each regiment of the time had its own color, with a 
tendency to copy the buttons, prominent lining and 
pockets of Versailles. Three cornered hats, long 
coats and knee breeches were usual, but the eqaulet 
was not invented until the middle of the century. 

The officers generally named under the comman- 
dant are major, captain, lieutenant and enseigne, 
who carried the spontoon or spear as well as a 
sword. Sometimes they are spoken of as "blue" of- 
ficers, and some they are called ''reformed". This 
sounds as if they might be Protestants, but in reality 
"reforme" means that they are on half pay. It is 
to be imagined, however, that during the many 
colonial wars they soon earned full pay, a per diem 
of thirty cents. 

Louis XIV invented the barrack system instead of 
billeting his troops on the country as previously, and 
we find these casernes at Mobile. Most colonial 
towns were walled, but Mobile not only was without 
a wall, but only the garrison on duty occpied quar- 
ters within the fort. The soldiers as well as officers 
lived in houses about town, and this tended to make 
the military fraternize with the habitans. Indeed 
the two classes tended more and more to become one. 

These habitans gave good account of themselves 
when the Spaniards attacked Dauphine Island, and 
they suffered badly when the English raided that 
settlement. The French garrison had severe treat- 
ment later w^hen they attacked a British smuggling 



ship from Jamaica, which had run in past Dauphine 
Island. 

As in the colonial government, so among the armed 
forces the line was not sharply drawn between sol- 
diers and sailors.' In America, not a few sailors 
were freebooters, — filibustiers, — who had preyed up- 
on the Spanish plate fleet from the Isthmus of Pana- 
ma, or sacked ports on the Spanish Main. A whole 
colony of these volunteered to settle at Mobile, but 
Bienville wisely declined. One of the first pilots 
was the freebooter Le Grave from San Domingo, but 
soon the king maintained pilots for the bay as well 
as for the river. 

There was constant need of the military. When 
St. Augustine was besieged by the British in 1702 it 
sent to Mobile for air. Two years later there was a 
well founded rumor of a squadron fitting out at 
Charleston for the capture of Mobile, — a compliment 
Iberville was planning to return just before his 
death. Perhaps the Spanish Succession War closed 
none too soon, for it was understood that the British 
at Charleston, recognizing the real seat of Latin 
power, were then planning the capture of Mobile. 
When there was peace in Europe the British and 
French colonies were often hostile. Their traders 
were always rivals among the Indian tribes'. Even 
Spaniards were not always friendly, and during the 
short Spanish war Bienville captured Pensacola and 
held it for several years. There was, therefore, con- 
stant need of either offensive or defensive operations 
in the Mobile territory. 

After all, the true defenders of Louisiana were the 
habitans. Although they were not organized as 
militia, they were all hunters and used to arms, even 

87 



where they did not, as coureurs and voyageurs, live 
a part of the time with the Indians in the woods. 
The soldiers themselves showed a power of adapta- 
tion to their new surroundings not found among the 
British. The principal use of soldiers from France 
was to drill the habitans, and at one time we find the 
habitans drilling the soldiers, for the border warfere 
of the South called for scouting much oftener than 
it did for maneuvres. The soldiers from France 
frequently settled in Louisiana after their terms had 
expired, and this tended to give the country a mili- 
tary tinge as well as to unify it. In this, perhaps, 
was the germ of that marked spirit of independence 
in Louisianians on which the governors commented 
a few years later. 

XX.— THE EARLIEST SHIPPING LIST. 

At the time Mobile was founded England had not 
the commanding position upon the sea which she 
afterwards assumed. This was to be the result of 
the Seven Years War, and in 1711 the issue was by 
no means certain. Colbert, one of the early minis- 
ters of Louis XIV, was a commercial genius seldom 
equalled in any country, and he had successfully 
bent his energies towards building up the French 
navy. Not only did he aim at ships for the purposes 
of war, but a merchant marine was even more in his 
mind. 

Even during the war with England, there was sel- 
dom a season when the royal ships did not come from 
Rochefort or La Rochelle to Port Dauphin, the har- 
bor of Mobile. They were all armed, or convoyed by 
naval vessels, and we are fortunate enough to have 
two different colonial narratives which give lists of 



ships. The more detailed is the Journal Hi^torique 
attributed to La Harpe, and this is supplemented by 
the Relation of Penicaut, which sometimes adds a 
few details. 

In 1699, January 31, came the Badine of thirty 
guns, the IMarin of thirty, the Francois of fifty, 
and in December La Gironde of forty-six ^ns, 
and La Renommee of fifty, — a year later she carried 
fifty-six. Iberville's first voyage was this on the 
Badine, and his second was that on the Renommee. 
All vessels seem to have staid two or three months in 
port. These visited Biloxi, new Ocean Springs. 

In 1701, May 30, came L'Enflammee of twenty-six 
guns, and on December 18, La Renommee and Le 
Palmier, and it was from his sickbed on the Renom- 
mee that Iberville directed the foundation of Mobile. 
These were, therefore, the first vessels visiting the 
port of Mobile. Iberville procured a mast for the 
Palmier from the new settlement. 

In August, 1703, came La Loire, one of the few 
vessels mentioned with nothing said about the num- 
ber of guns. She may have been a merchant vessel, 
and in fact we are told that she was a chaloupe, a 
smaller kind of sailing vessel. 

In July, 1704, there arrived the Pelican of fifty 
guns, one of the largest ships of the navy, but un- 
fortunately bringing from her stop at San Domingo 
that first visitation of yellow fever, which proved so 
fatal. Iberville was to have come on her, but was 
detained in France by sickness. It so happened he 
never revisited his colony after the first three 
voyages, as he was employed on warlike expeditions' 
in the West Indies, and in 1706 died of yellow fever 
at Havana. 

89 



No vessel is noted for 1705, but we are told that 
La Rosaire of forty-six guns was wrecked at Pensa- 
cola under Vice Admiral L'Andeche. 

For June, 1706, is noted L'Aigle of thirty-six guns,, 
convoying a brigantine with supplies ; Chateaugue 
was in command. There was also a fifty gun vessel 
w^hich came only to Pensacola and sent over supplies^ 
— -for one thing, curiously enough, "legune," vege- 
tables ! The next year the tables were turned, as the 
British Indians burned all Pensacola outside of the 
fort and Bienville assisted the garrison with food. 
La Harpe gives the Renommee as arriving in Feb- 
ruary, 1707. 

It is this time that Penicaut assigns the tragical 
account of the St. Antoine. She was commanded 
by St. Maurice of St. Malo, and had under the bow- 
sprit as her figurehead a wooden statue of St. An- 
toine. The irreverent sailors in some way dislodged 
the figrue, tied a stone around its neck, and threw 
it into the sea. Shipwreck immediately followed at 
the east end of Dauphine Island. 

Then follows a blank for 1709 and 1710, except in 
brigantines for the coasting trade to the Spanish 
colonies and French Islands, and in tact down until 
1711, covering the period of want at Old Mobile, 
and the removal to the present site. Public dis- 
asters and famine in Frence prevented the gov- 
ernment from sending aid to the American colonies, 
and threw governmental responsibility on Bienville 
in Louisiana, and even supplies when they came were, 
from a private source. In September of that year 
there came again the Renommee, with abundant 
supplies, — a vessel which Grace King says is truly 
''The Renowned" of our early history. This voyage 

90 



was a private venture, the monarch supplying the 
ship, and Remonville, ever friendly to the colony, 
the cargo. 

For 1712 we are given the St. Avoie, a trading ves- 
sel and not a part of the king's navy. It came under 
the pious La Vigne Voisin, who built a church at his 
favorite Dauphine Island. 

Peace was signed with England, and in May, 1713, 
the Baron de la Fosse, of forty guns, arrived with 
Cadillac, the new governor, Duclos, the ncAV com- 
missaire, and the whole slate of officers which su- 
perseded Bienville and his Canadians, besides 400,- 
000 livres of merchandise. La Harpe also mentions 
the Louisiane of twenty guns for this year, and Peni- 
caut the Dauphine. 

For 1714 we have La Justice of two hundred tons, 
which sank in the old channel of the port on Dau- 
phine Island. The Dauphine seems to have come 
back early in this year, and La Harpe mentions her 
as also returning in August, 1715. Crozat intended 
building a merchant marine of brigantines to ply 
from a central magasin on Dauphine Island ; but 
with the peace the Spaniards closed their ports to 
their old allies, and nothing was left but smuggling. 
Crozat was not liberal himself. In this year a frigate 
from the great port of La Rochelle and a brigantine 
from Martinique were both turned away ; for no ship 
. could trade at Mobile except those of Crozat. He 
consented to the formation at Mobile of the first 
Southern syndicate, — St. Denis, Graveline. De Lery, 
La Freniere, Beaulieu and Derbanne. — and thej^ 
made a brave attempt to trade overland to Mexico. 

La Paix of twelve guns w^as sole arrival for 1716, 
but next year not only does Penicaut give La Dau- 

91 



phine. but he and La Harpe have a good deal to say 
about the Duclos and Paon, each of thirty guns, and 
La Paix. We even have pictures of these vessels, 
and the Paon had the remarkable experience of 
coming through a 21-foot channel into the port at 
Dauphine Island, only to have a storm fill the chan- 
nel with sand behind her and imprison her. She was 
finally taken out by an inward passage after being 
lightened to ten feet. 

In February, 1718, came John Law's first vessels, 
the Neptune, Dauphine and Vigilante, with commis- 
sions for his new officials. Shipping still frequented 
Dauphine Island, but mainly to bring colonists for 
the Mississippi concessions. From the island they 
proceeded in smaller boats to their destinations. In 
this way Dauphine Island was the great distributing 
point for the Mississippi Bubble. Biloxi noAV super- 
swedes Mobile as the capital. 

XXL— THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE. 

It is a truth which we have learned from Malthus, 
that, while the population of a country may outrun 
the means of subsistence, nevertheless there is a 
smaller birth rate in times of distress than in other 
years. The colony of Louisiana during its first 
years offers a good field of observation as to this 
and other social laws. On account of the prevalence 
of war in Europe and the British predominance on 
the ocean, but few people came before the Peace of 
Utrecht, and so Louisiana presented something in 
the nature of the closed tube which physicists use 
in their experiments. 

The settlement at Biloxi, — our Ocean Springs, — 
was only temporary and disastrous in itself. Not 

92 



only did Sauvole, the commandant, but not a few 
of the one hundred and fifty people noted as resi- 
dents die in 1701. The coureurs de bois were by no 
means ideal colonists, but it is to be remembered 
that these Canadians, brave if rude, were the origin- 
al nucleus of the colony, and when later anchored by 
marriage made good citizens. At the time of the re- 
moval to Fort Louis on Mobile River the colonists, 
although reinforced, were in all only one hundred 
and thirty. They were increased the next year by 
some eighteen passengers, most of whom probably 
remained, and in 1704 we have the first real census 
returns. This year, before the inroad of yellow 
fever in the fall, was probably the banner year for 
this up-river settlement. We are told that the town 
covered one hundred and ninety arpens, — an arpent 
being a little less than an acre, — and consisted of 
eighty one-story houses. In these lived twenty-seven 
families, including ten children, — three girls and 
seven boys. 

The birth rate means more than immigration, es- 
pecially if there is rivalry with another race, for it 
shows virility and contentment and Yf^^ ^^^e promise 
and potency of a future nation. Even if numbers of 
immigrants and of birth were the same, immigrants 
might not all be desirable or might not assimilate, 
while the natural increase by what the Shorter Cate- 
chism calls ordinary generation makes up a homo- 
geneous people. The church registers do not record 
the marriages until after the capital period, and it 
would not be fair to rely upon the incidental men 
tion of couples, important as this is in tracing an- 
cestry. Fortunately the Baptismal Register sur- 
vives, even if it be not complete. The first two 

93 



years passed without any record and then October 
4, 1704, comes the first birth, that of Francois, son 
of Jean de Can (properly given elsewhere as Le 
Camp) and Magdeleine Robert, his wife. Francois 
Le Camp, therefore, was the first Creole of the 
colony, a title w^hich after his removal passed to an- 
other as a mark of honor. There was in 1704 also a 
LeMay child, which died, however, within a few 
days. Besides white families, there were eleven 
slaves, all Indian, and one hundred and eighty sol- 
diers. These families were constituted in part of 
the twenty-three young women who came over in 
the Pelican that fall, and were married within one 
month. The next year came another birth, that of 
Jacques, son of maitre canonier Roy, but the church 
records entirely fail for 1706, despite the Pelican 
marriages. In 1706 we are told that there were 
nineteen families, and that the total population was 
eighty-two. 

In the year 1707 (that in which there was the at- 
tempt to supersede Bienville by another governor), 
was socially not without significance as marking 
the birth of a child half negro, half Choctaw, but yet 
more as showing the rapid increase of white births 
to seven, of whom all but two w^ere from October to 
November. Names of all kinds as well as trades 
and offices increase from this year, and in 1708 we 
find ten births, of whom all but three range from 
January 30 to June 18, and the remainder are in Oc- 
tober and December. In 1709 were seven, of whom 
the majority were from February to May. and the 
others in August and October. The population at 
this time was made up of one hundred and twenty- 
two soldiers, seventy-seven habitans, and eighty In- 

94 



dian slaves, the habitans almost equally divided be- 
tween men, women and children. It w^as in the year 
1708 that the Renommee came with supplies after 
over a year of want. Shortly previous to this Cha- 
teaugue's traversier, which brought the goods from 
Dauphine Island, had been accidentally^ sunk, and, 
although this loss w^as supplied, there was a failure 
of crops and the curious entry of the bringing of 
vegetables out from France. The next year was dis- 
astrous on account of the overflow, and the removal 
of the town to the new site. Accordingly in sym- 
pathy with public distress the birth rate falls off ; 
scattered through 1710 were three births and 1711 
records none. 

Even on the new site the recovery was slow, for 
there were no births until the second half of 1712, 
and of these two one was illegitimate. Indeed, 
Crozat's exploitation was not reflected in the birth 
register for several years. In the year 1713 we are 
told that the total population had become four 
hundred, including twenty negro and other slaves, 
but as this also embraces the garrison, generally 
amounting to one hundred and fifty soldiers, we can 
reckon the habitans as not over two hundred. In 
this year was the second consignment of marriage- 
able young women, there being twenty-five girls 
brought from the Province of Brittany, — where per- 
haps even then resided the ancestors of Ernest 
Renan. 1714 show^s two births, one of these of a 
Tensaw wife of a colonist. 1714 shows none at all 
of whites, and only two Indian. In January of this 
year a vessel arrived at Dauphine Island with sup- 
plies from France, but sank in the old channel, and 
the only relief was that Chateaugue obtained some 

95 



supplies from Vera Cruz. With 1715, however, 
peace and Crozat have at least twelve births to their 
<!redit. almost all in the winter and in the fall. Thi«. 
however, was the best year, for 1716 and 1717 each 
show eight, the latter mainly in the fall, and 1718 
only four. 

1717 was the year marking the change of govern- 
ment from Crozat to John Law, and the population 
suddenly jumped to seven hundred because of the 
large immigration, but the births are stationary at 
eight, mainly in the fall, and the next year there 
were six. John Law sent over so many colonists that 
the registers now assume a different appearance, 
and Huve and the occasional Davion have their 
hands full of baptisms. Of the fifteen births in 1719 
only three occur after June, while of the twenty- 
three of 1720 the majority are from August on, and 
the nineteen of 1721 are almost equally divided. 

These about reached high-water mark, for the cap- 
ital had now been removed to the Mississippi. Nev- 
ertheless, immigrants came and after a fall to twelve 
births in each of the years 1723 and 1724, the num- 
ber twenty-three was reached again the next year, 
for, although relatively Mobile was less important, 
it continued to grow in actual size. 

The situation of the colony, distressing as it was, 
at least permits an interesting study in one respect. 
The two periods of war and peace, of about ten years 
each, present somewhat different aspects, but each 
shows October as the month of most numerous 
birth s. On the whole, there were twenty-one for 
that month as against seventeen and sixteen for 
March and February, which rank next in order, 
while January and December rank next, each with 

9fi 



thirteen births. The least prolific month is July, 
with only three to its credit for the eighteen years 
of record. The physiological side of birth months 
is an interesting subject itself. 

The general increase follows very closely those of 
the years of peace, but the troubled times preceding 
1714 shows a somewhat different story. October is 
then the most proilfic, March being next also, but 
far behind, but not only did August equal February 
for the third place, but January and December had 
no place much better than the loAvest, omitting Sep- 
tember, which recorded no birth at all. The rate is 
perhaps one to every ten families each year. The 
population Avould double about every thirty years 
if nobody died. 

It is unfortunate that we cannot supplement this 
study of the Baptismal Register by study of the 
death register, but the latter record w^as not begun 
until 1726. AYe know" that in 1704 there^was a visi- 
tation of what is supposed to be yellow fever and 
which was very destructive, sw^eeping off half the 
sailors of the Pelican and thirty of the newly arrived 
soldiers. At that time also the great explorer Tonty 
died, and a number of the colonists. Fever is com- 
mon in ncAvly settled countries, particularly where, 
as in this case, the settlement is in the lowlands. In 
order to better communication the inhabitants at 
first settled on the rivers and other streams and 
were thus exposed to malaria. The same trouble oc- 
curred in Virginia among the English, but in both 
provinces the colonists gradually became acclimat- 
ized, and we have less complaint in subsequent years. 
Quinine was not yet known in Louisiana, although 
it had been discovered by the Indians in Peru. AVe 

97 



do not hear as yet even of coffee, which was to prove 
something of a specific against malaria. As they 
learned to live on the sea coast, or on bluffs and 
away from the lowlands and bottoms, the Creoles 
came to be a longlived race. 

XXII.— THE INDIAN TRADE. 

The statement of William Garrett Brown that the 
fate of North America was decided by traders' on the 
Gulf coast seems a paradox, and yet there is prob- 
ably much truth in it. These men represented the 
two hostile civilizations of France and England, 
then dividing the world. The country in which they 
contended was the Alabama-Tombigbee Basin, ex- 
tending east and west almost from the Mississippi 
River to waters draining to the Atlanic, and from 
the Gulf up to the Ohio Valley. The English of Vir- 
ginia and afterwards of Carolina carried their wares 
from the ooean across the watershed to the Alabama- 
Tombigbee Basin, while on the other hand the 
French had a nearer port at Mobile and water com- 
munication the whole way into this interior. 

To understand the situation it must be remember- 
ed that three of the greatest Indian tribes upon the 
American continent inhabited this Basin. The 
Chickasaws were at the sources of the Tombigbee 
and the Choctaws nearer its mouth, while the Mus- 
cogees in their four divisions lived on the upper 
Alabama, and the Cherokees, a fourth great tribe, 
occupied the mountains to the northeast. These 
tribes communicated also by land trails, indistinct 
to the white men, but well understood by the In- 
dians. Some were made by prehistoric animals or 
by the buffaloes, and they were not only the aborigin- 

98 



la roads, but the routes of the first European ex- 
plorers, of colonists, and sometimes even of our rail- 
ways. There is no doubt that they served for the 
native trade long before Columbus' day. Just as 
French was the language of commercial develop- 
ment in the East, so in this Western territory the 
Mobilian tongue furnished the trade jargon from the 
Atlantic to the Mississippi. This seems to point 
back to a time, perhaps before DeSoto, when the 
Mobile tribe was the head of a great confederacy. 
A French map of 1733 shows ' ' Old Mobilians ' ' not far 
from our Claiborne, besides those near Mount Ver- 
non on Mobile River. 

The aboriginal commerce related mainly to wea- 
pons and ornaments, and arrow-heads and other In- 
struments are found made of stone brought some- 
times from a great distance. The trade after the 
white men came was in clothing and blankets, which 
simple enough, but superior to the old skins and 
lurs, and also in liquor, and. curiously enough, to- 
bacco and tools. The three implements Avhich have 
most influenced civilization are the plow, the anvil 
and the saw, but in French times these were special- 
ties even among the Europeans, and only the axe 
and mattock were much used by the natives. Among 
the English trade goods we also find hoes ; but the 
Indian was rather a hunter than a farmer. At first 
the Spaniards and even the French would not supply 
arms to the savages, but very soon guns and ammu- 
nition became staples of trade. 

The earliest explorers hunted for gold and silver, 
and even Cadillac did not give over the search ; but 
they soon found, that, although there was little gold, 
the furs and skins which the India/is brought fur- 

99 



nished a basis of exchange. A deerskin became the 
standard of value by which everything else was 
measured. Twice a year, in spring and fall, the furs 
and skins were brought by canoe or packhorse to 
Mobile, or later to Fort Tombecbe on the one river 
and to Toulouse on the other, and thence shipped to 
Mobile for export. In return blue and red cotton 
goods, blankets, ribbons, guns and ammunition, 
brass kettles, axes and hatchets were taken back to 
the nation. The French called their cloth Mazamet 
and Limbourg, while the British had their strouds 
from Gloucestershire ; but the proverb as to the rose 
has analogies in dry goods also. 

The French trader was really a royal officer. If 
he went into the woods as a coureur it was as the 
agent of the commandant at the fort. On the other 
hand, the British trader was generally a Scotchman 
trading for himself. 

Several stages in the history of the trade should 
be noted. Before Mobile was settled the British 
Avere supreme, and after Mobile was built the first 
years were of uncertainty ; but the easy water com- 
munication soon gave the coast country to the 
French and confined the British to the Cherokees 
and Chickasaws. This result was largely accom- 
plished by the energy of Bienville and was sealed 
by his building Fort Toulouse among the Alibamons 
in 1714. The time of Crozat was essentially a trade 
epoch, although so far as it was successful this was 
due to Bienville, whom the Indians loved for his 
fairness, and not to the governor Cadillac, who early 
offended them. Cadillac had been in charge of De- 
troit, where the beaver trade centred, and could not 
get used to the less valuable products of his South- 

300 



ern government. He almost lost the Choctaws. As 
late as 1715 English influence was so strong even 
among the friendly Choctaws that only two villages^ 
— Tchieachae and Conchaque, — remained friendly to 
the French. Bienville's success in winning back the 
upper Choctaw villages was so complete that it has 
been forgotten. We are apt to think that what he 
effected had always been so ; but it was a black day 
when he had to give refuge to these two villages 
and started the work of reclaiming the others. By 
1718, however, — with Cadillac gone, — the tables 
were turned and the French traders from Toulouse 
had practically run the English out of the Alibamon 
territory. 

The rivalry was between Mobile and Charleston. 
Mobile traders had establishments where Nashville 
now stands and shipped from Toulouse beyond 
modern Atlanta. The Charleston trade crossed the 
Savannah River near where Augusta w^as to be, — 
indeed the future Georgia city was largely a Charles- 
ton outpost, — and thence forked to the Cherokees on 
the north and to the Creeks on the west. The Brit- 
ish trader crossed the rivers above the French forts 
and passed through the rough country of northern 
Alabama to the upper tribes of the Muscogees, 
Chickasaws, or even to the Choctaw^s. The first, 
called the Creeks by the British and the Alibamons 
by the French, were a bone of contention, while the 
Chickasaws at first favored the French but then 
went over wholly to the British. The Choctaws in 
later years were always in the French interest. Sta- 
tistics are wanting, but it is clear that the Indian 
trade was very large and constituted the basis of 
European diplomacy in the South. 

101 



The French were more liberal in their presents. 
In 1711 they gave 4,000 livres, about what they spent 
on their fortifications. The more pi*esents, the less 
fortifications necessary. An epitome of the case 
lies in the fact that Charleston was fortified, while 
Mobile, nearer the savages, never had a wall. 

XXIII.— CONCLUSION. 

Mobile was founded as the bavsis of French colonial 
effort on the Gulf of Mexico, and was the first capi- 
tal of Louisiana. This province embraced the whole 
of the Mississippi Valley, with the Alabama-Tombig- 
bee Basin added on the east and with indefinite 
claims to the Texan coast towards the west. We 
have" seen the town on its first site at Twenty-seven 
^lile Bluff, and afterwards on the permanent loca- 
tion where Mobile River joints the Bay. We have 
seen it not only firmly established, but in Crozat's 
time reaching out in all directions towards the real- 
ization of its American empire. 

Its story up to this removal is that of an earnest 
effort to found a French colonial capital in America, 
and, as a second generation was now coming to ma- 
turity, it could be called the First Creole Capital. 
Whether regarded from the point of view of its 
sites, from the political side of governmental experi- 
ments, from the economic attempt of Crozat to build 
up a monopoly, or in other ways, it was an essay full 
of interest, and not without a measure of success. 

Its supremacy was imperilled by the formation of 
Law's Com_pany to settle the Mississippi Valley it- 
self, which led to the removal of the colonial offices. 
Mobile ceased to be the capital, but it never ceased 

102 



to be important, its historical importance was 
henceforth based on other grounds. 

And while the main development left the Ala- 
bama-Tombigbee Basin for the greater Mississippi 
Valley, this was only an expansion of what had be- 
gun at Mobile, just as Law's Company was an ex- 
pansion of Crozat's. The expansion was by men 
who had received their training at Mobile, now 
transplanted to a larger field to put in execution 
the lessons they had learned. And, moreover, the 
future history of the Alabama-Tombigbee Basin it- 
self was to be no small one. It remained the bul- 
wark of Louisiana against the English on the At- 
lantic as well as the centre of French Indian trade 
and policy throughout the entire South. If there 
must come a conflict between the French and Eng- 
lish civilizations for the control of the Mississippi 
Valley, it would be fought out by traders and by sol- 
diers on this Gulf coast or in the mountains between 
the Mobile and Georgia frontiers. 

The foundation of Mobile was therefore one step 
in the long duel of Teuton and Latin which has pre- 
vailed since the days of Rome, wiiich reached a 
crisis in the Anglo-French wars of the eighteenth 
century, and culminated in Napoleon's day. It took 
in the world from India to America. British colonies 
contended with Canada on the north and Louisiana 
on the west until the war ended with the Peace of 
Paris in 1763. Although Canada has attracted more 
attention, Louisiana was the greater prize, — and 
Louisiana became an accomplished fact with the set- 
tlement of Mobile in 1702 and its upbuilding on a 
new site in 1711-1718. 

103 



The masterful Teuton thinks that he is conquer- 
ing the world, but the study of races seems to show, 
that, while he may have to create a ruling class, his 
civilization is made up of institutions which he 
adopts from the East or the South. Even his blood 
is less persistent than that of the darker races. The 
blonde type is yielding to the brunette. It may be 
that the historical contributions of the Franco-Span- 
ish type in America are not yet closed. Already 
the old Creole has influenced the whole Mississippi 
Valley more than the American generally realizes. 

Whatever the future, whatever the silent in- 
fluences since the Treaty of Paris, the colonial 
period is becoming clearer as we study'^its records. 
The contest of the British and Latin civilizations for 
what is now the United States was in the South East, 
where Louisiana adjoined the British colonies. As 
the beginning of British institutions was at James- 
town and Plj^mouth Rock, the beginning of Louis- 
iana was at the founding of Mobile. 



104 



1711 1911 

THE 

MOBILE 

BICENTENNIAL 

1. THE CELEBRATION 

MAY 26-28, 1911 

2. THE FOUNDING OF MOBILE 

1702-1718 



P. J. HAMILTON 
ERWIN CRAIGHEAD 
W. K. P. WILSON 



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BINDERY INC. 



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INDIANA 46962 




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